In a cooperation between the Institute of Stochastics and the ZSW in Ulm, a model for gas diffusion layer in fuel cells is being developed. This component is responsible for the hydrogen und oxygen supply at the membrane. There, hydrogen und oxygen react to create water and relesse electric energy. Furthermore, the layer is responsible for the water management, which means the evacuation of the water, that is created during the reaction, and also for water storage, because this reaction works only in the presence of some water. A 3D model is being developed, based on models from spatial statistics, that should be used to analyze structural attributes of the gas diffusion layer. Among others, the following topics for theses can be offered:

• Development and implementation of methods to calculate different  physical characteristics from realisations of the model as well as from the real 3D data and their statistical analysis. 

• Enhancement of the existing model. Extra components should be integrated into the existing model to perform statistical analyses. One possibility is the modeling of aging, which means the degradation of the material. By using simulation studies the difference between new and old materials should be analyzed. Special interest lies on changes of the physical attributes.

• Development and implementation of an adaptation algorithm with special focus on important physical characteristics and 3D segmentation of image data. For this, the preprocessing of 3D data (3D segmentation) is necessary.

If you are interested, please contact Prof. Schmidt or Gerd Gaiselmann.

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