Fuel cell digital twins - Modelling framework for aerospace grade megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel cells

SMS燃料电池系统有限公司的愿景是主要为支线飞机市场提供零排放、兆瓦级的燃料电池推进系统，利用数字孪生方法来优化由该技术实现的公共交通解决方案的设计和运营。该项目的目的是开发一种具有更大有源面积的燃料电池的数字孪生模拟，以实现同类领先的兆瓦级电堆开发。这有助于我们更好地了解燃料电池系统在虚拟环境中的行为，然后再进行更昂贵的工作来开发用于物理测试的铁鸟演示器。该项目的主要目标是开发创新和高功率密度的兆瓦级燃料电池堆设计，执行一组耦合的电化学和热模拟，以演示该方法的功能优势。开发的建模框架将允许我们快速优化关键参数因素，并通过替代燃料电池数字孪生方法来完成，该方法复制了传统模拟的物理原理，但计算成本很低。这允许更广泛地探索设计空间和实施先进的基于模型的控制方法。数字孪生技术将有助于燃料电池技术的交付从千瓦系统扩大到兆瓦系统。在兆瓦级，我们的研究表明，我们可以在当前一代千瓦燃料电池的基础上进行改进，以创建更高功率密度和更简单的燃料电池推进系统。这将有助于提高氢燃料电池动力总成的性能，以满足飞机应用对重量、体积和认证的严格要求。

SMS Fuel Cell Systems Ltd's vision is to deliver zero-emissions, megawatt scale fuel cell propulsion systems primarily for regional aircraft markets, utilising a digital twin approach to optimise the design and operation of the mass transit solutions enabled by this technology. The aim of this project is to develop a digital twin simulation of a fuel cell with larger active areas to enable class-leading megawatt-scale stack development. This helps us to better understand the behaviour of the fuel cell systems in a virtual environment before more costly work is undertaken to develop iron bird demonstrators for physical testing. The key objectives of the project are to develop innovative and high-power density megawatt-scale fuel cell stack designs, performing a set of coupled electrochemical and thermal simulations to demonstrate functional advantages of the approach. The developed modelling framework will allow us to optimise key parametric factors rapidly, and be done via a surrogate fuel cell digital twin approach which replicates the physics from a conventional simulation but at a fraction of the computational cost. This allows for broader exploration of the design space and implementation of advanced model-based control approaches. Digital Twin techniques will help enable delivery of fuel cell technology scale up from kilowatt to megawatt systems. At the megawatt scale, our studies show that we can improve on the current generation of kilowatt fuel cells to create a more power dense and simpler fuel cell propulsion system. This will help improve the performance of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain to meet the strict weight, volume and certification requirements for an aircraft application.