Forming Metallic Micro-Feature Bipolar Plates for Fuel Cell Using Combined Hydroforming and Stamping Processes

Fuel cell constitutes from different components, among which bipolar plates are the important and expensive part. Nowadays, the fabrication methods of bipolar plates are the main challenges in fuel celltechnology. Among different methods, the fabrication of bipolar plates from metal forming processes is the bestselection. Recently, hydroforming is one of these methods that are used in fabrication of these plates. On theother hand, there are different layouts of flow fields for various usages. These layouts can be categorized, informing viewpoint, to two distinct groups; one of them is the simple group (e.g. serpentine or parallel flowfields) and the other is the complex group (e.g. pattern and pin type flow fields). This paper investigate onfeasibility of a hybrid micro-manufacturing process to fabricate fuel cell metallic bipolar plates that consists ofmulti-array pin type flow field on a large surface area. First, several forming methods for formation of bipolar plates in the FEM software (ABAQUS 6.10) were simulated. Second, the best method for actual fabrication ofmetallic bipolar plates without any rupture or defect was hydroformed. The results indicated that the complexflow field metallic bipolar plates can be formed adequately using the combined hydroforming and stamping (sizing) processes.