Study of degradation of fuel cell stack based on the collected high-dimensional data and clustering algorithms calculations

• Published in: Energy and AI 2022-11, Vol.10, p.100184, Article 100184
• Main Authors: Niu, Tong, Huang, Weifeng, Zhang, Caizhi, Zeng, Tao, Chen, Jiawei, Li, Yu, Liu, Yang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Clustering algorithms; Degradation of fuel cell; Fuel cell vehicle; Principal component analysis
• ISSN: 2666-5468; 2666-5468
• DOI: 10.1016/j.egyai.2022.100184

•Real and effective test data are adopted.•Combined with dimensionality reduction clustering algorithm, the error caused by inconsistent vehicle operating conditions is eliminated to a certain extent.•It more accurately shows the deterioration of fuel cell performance. Accurate perception of the performance degradation of fuel cell is very important to detect its health state. However, inconsistent operating conditions of fuel cell vehicles in the test result in errors in the data. In order to obtain a more credible degradation rate, this study proposes a novel method to classify the experimental data collected under different working conditions into similar operating conditions by using dimensionality reduction and clustering algorithms. Firstly, the experimental data collected from fuel cell vehicles belong to high-dimensional data. Then projecting high-dimensional data into three-dimensional feature vector space via principal component analysis (PCA). The dimension-reduced three-dimensional feature vectors are input into the clustering algorithm, such as K-means and density-based noise application spatial clustering(DBSCAN). According to the clustering results, the fuel cell voltage data with similar operating conditions can be classified. Finally, the selected voltage data can be used to precisely represent the true performance degradation of an on-board fuel cell stack. The results show that the voltage using the K-means algorithm declines the fastest, followed by the DBSCAN algorithm, finally the original data, which indicates that the performance of the fuel cell actually declines faste. Early intervention can prolong its life to the greatest extent. [Display omitted]