Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are recognized as promising next-generation energy technology. Yet, their performance is critically limited by inefficient gas transport and water management in conventional flow channels. Current rectangular gas channels (GC) restrict reactive gas penetration into the gas diffusion layer (GDL) due to insufficient longitudinal convection. At the same time, the complex multiphase interactions at the mesoscale pose challenges for numerical modeling. To address these limitations, this study proposes a novel cathode channel design featuring laterally contracted fin-shaped barrier blocks and develops a mesoscopic multiphase coupled transport model using the lattice Boltzmann method combined with the volume-of-fluid approach (LBM-VOF). Through systematic investigation of multiphase flow interactions across channel geometries and GDL surface wettability effects, we demonstrate that the optimized barrier structure induces bidirectional forced convection, enhancing oxygen transport compared to linear channels. Compared with the traditional straight channel, the optimized composite channel achieves a 60.9% increase in average droplet transport velocity and a 56.9% longer droplet displacement distance, while reducing the GDL surface water saturation by 24.8% under the same inlet conditions. These findings provide critical insights into channel structure optimization for high-efficiency PEMFC, offering a validated numerical framework for multiphysics-coupled fuel cell simulations.
Li et al. (2026) studied this question.