An Engineering System for Automated Design and Optimization of Fuel Cell Powered Vehicles

NREL has contracted Vulcanworks to provide an Advanced Engineering Environment (AEE) configured for development of automotive vehicles powered by fuel cell/fuel processor systems. Nuvera Fuel Cells, Inc, provided information for development of relationships and mathematical models of fuel cell and fuel processors. The Vulcanworks AEE product is an integrated set of tools, tailored to solve design problems in specific environments and processes. The AEE allows extremely rapid iteration of system designs, with automated analysis capability. It contains a database of design and manufacturing rules, an automated geometry creation engine, links to a variety of CAE analysis packages, and a Web-browser interface. This paper describes a prototype AEE developed for design of vehicles powered by fuel cell/fuel processor systems, including an optimization capability for packaging the propulsion components. It also describes the use of the prototype to assess the following design task: Optimize the percentage of full power available for the first five minutes of operation from startup. The last section of the paper briefly describes the characteristics of the final design of the AEE, which is planned for developed in further phases of the contract.