Modeling and experimental verification of a 25W fabricated PEM fuel cell by parametric and GMDH-type neural network

¹ Department of Energy, Material and Energy Research Center, Karaj, Iran
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pardis Branch, Islamic Azad University, Pardis New City, Tehran, Iran

^a Corresponding author: mohammadhosein.ahmadi@gmail.com

Received: 29 November 2014
Accepted: 19 June 2015

Abstract

In this paper two artificial intelligence techniques to predict and control behavior of a 25W fabricated proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell, have been investigated. These approaches are: “Parametric Neural Network (PNN)” and “Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH)” for the first time. A PNN model is developed by introducing a “p” parameter in the activation function of the neural network. PNN model with its specific tangent hyperbolic transfer function have the ability to be with different nonlinearity degrees of input data. To develop GMDH network, quadratic polynomial was utilized. To determine proper weights of GMDH network, back propagation algorithm has been used. The input layer consists of gas pressure, fuel cell temperature and input current experimental data, to predict the output voltage. The results show that both generalized Parametric and GMDH-type neural networks are reliable tools to predict the output voltage of PEM fuel cell with high coefficient of determination values of 0.96 and 0.98.