On the smallness conditions for a PEMFC single cell problem

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to prove whose smallness conditions being necessary in order to get the final result of existence of a solution. In the first part, we present the model for a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) single cell and we clarify the interactions of the different components namely, velocity, pressure, density, temperature and potential. The final mathematical model is a quasilinear elliptic system where the cross effects have a strong interlink. It consists of the Stokes--Darcy system altogether with thermoelectrochemical system under some non-standard interface and boundary conditions. The proof of existence of weak solutions relies on the Tychonof fixed point theorem, by providing some regularity and some smallness conditions. The actual system is divided into two systems of equations and they are separately studied. The novelty of the present work is to establish quantitative estimates for improving the technical hypotheses and, in particular, the smallness conditions in the two-dimensional case. Indeed, the smallness conditions only can be explicit if quantitative estimates are established. To this aim, we establish quantitative estimates for the Poincar\'e and Sobolev inequalities and for some trilinear terms.