Study on creep damage and life prediction of the planar solid oxide fuel cell by modeling of multiphysics coupled

In present paper, a strain-based creep damage and failure probability model is constructed to conduct time dependent mechanical performance analysis of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with nonuniform temperature fields obtained by multiphysics coupled modeling at an operational temperature of 800 °C. It demonstrates that assuming uniform temperature fields significantly underestimates the creep damage and failure probability of SOFC components compared to nonuniform temperature fields. The upper interconnector reaches the critical damage value at 54 117 h and initiates a crack, located on the outer surface of the upper interconnector rib, positioned 39 mm from the fuel outlet. After 55 000 h, the failure probability of the anode support is rapidly increasing, reaching 0.185 after 80 000 h, which is 5–6 orders higher than other components. The upper interconnector and anode support are potential failure components, which should be subject to safety inspection to ensure structural integrity after 55 000 h of operation.