Investigation of stamping process of metallic bipolar plates in PEM fuel cell—Numerical simulation and experiments

• Stamping process of metallic bipolar plate is simulated by finite element.
• The parameters of flow channel with safely stamping are predicted.
• The experiments verified the accuracy of the simulation method.

Flow channel in bipolar plate for PEMFC has the function of transporting the fuel and oxygen and water. Stamping process for flow channel on metallic bipolar plates is an economic and convenient method for mass production. It is extremely important to predict and prevent the tearing, wrinkling, thinning, skid mark and spring back in stamping process. In this study, finite element method is used to predict the imperfection and analyze thickness variation during the stamping process. Dynaform software is employed to predict the performance of a stamping process. Forming Limit Diagrams are used to determine the safe limit of the metallic bipolar plates. In simulation, the dimension of flow channels, punch speed, radius of punch and die and draft angle were selected as variable process parameters. Experiments were conducted to compare with the simulation results. It is demonstrated that the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental ones for ss304 metal sheets. So simulation model could be employed as a predictive tool to provide optimal parameters for better performance of the stamping process.