Proton-exchange membrane fuel cell system testing method utilizing a digital twin

Testing capabilities for high power fuel cell systems become more and more important in the current maturing industry. The ability to test and develop such systems efficiently and safely represents an advantage over the competition. This paper presents a testing and development method for fuel cell systems utilizing a digital twin of the test stand as well as the used infrastructure to increase safety and development speed. The presented Dymola model is built using the thermodynamic model libraries of TLK-Thermo GmbH and run within a vehicle model on a dSpace Scalexio real-time-platform. This setup enables the development and testing of the test rig safety functions as well as the development of model-predictive controllers. Initial validation runs show promising results concerning the model quality.