The cathode electrode (CE) is a key component of polymer electrolyte fuel cells considering both performance and durability. The CE degrades under normal operating conditions due to load cycles and start/stop cycles via platinum and carbon support degradation mechanisms, respectively. In this study CE degradation from both types of cycles is modeled using data from experimental accelerated stress tests. It is shown that any interaction effects from superposition of the two types of cycles are negligible. This suggests that carbon corrosion effects are independent of platinum dissolution/agglomeration. The effect of the lower potential limit applied during load cycling is also shown to be negligible for 0.6 V–0.8 V, given a fixed upper potential limit. In addition, empirical fuel cell performance data is used with a simple vehicle model to convert standard drive cycles to fuel cell load cycles. Finally, a methodology is proposed to count equivalent voltage cycles from voltage profiles to link the accelerated test data to realistic operating conditions. The model is used to make CE durability predictions (to 10% voltage loss) under different drive cycle conditions to compare against fuel cell stack durability data for field operation of fuel cell vehicles.

考虑到性能和耐久性，阴极电极（CE）是聚合物电解质燃料电池的关键部件。由于负载循环和启动/停止循环分别通过铂和碳载体降解机理，CE在正常工作条件下会降解。在这项研究中，使用实验性加速应力测试数据模拟了两种循环的CE降解。结果表明，两种循环的叠加所产生的任何相互作用都可以忽略不计。这表明碳腐蚀作用与铂的溶解/聚集无关。在给定固定的电位上限的情况下，在负载循环期间施加的电位下限的影响对于0.6 V–0.8 V也可以忽略不计。此外，经验燃料电池性能数据与简单的车辆模型一起使用，可以将标准驾驶周期转换为燃料电池负载周期。最后，提出了一种从电压曲线中计算等效电压周期的方法，以将加速的测试数据链接到实际的工作条件。该模型用于在不同的行驶周期条件下进行CE耐久性预测（至10％的电压损失），以便与燃料电池车辆现场运行的燃料电池堆耐久性数据进行比较。