The author proposed an automatic diagnosing system, namely MDVA-MPD, of metallic micro-particles buried into Membrane Electrode Assemblies (MEA) fuel cells. This can assess the contamination information according to the spatio-temporary changes in pore fluid pressure excited oscillation under static magnetic field. MDVA-MPD is composed of several units of pore fluid pressure impact generators and permanent magnets, to excite natural oscillations and modulations through both magnetic and Lorentz forces in response to metallic contaminants. In this study, the multi-physics simulation was carried out to elucidate the detection mechanism of metallic particles by MDVA-MPD. So, the multi-modal oscillation energy, corresponding to Lorentz force and magnetic force, was visualized by applying mode decomposition of the simulated results. Consequently, the oscillation energy caused by the Lorentz force showed a distribution of negative values. In contrast, the magnetic force is considered to have positive or negative contribution to oscillation depending on several conditions, e.g. particle location. These effects were suggested to have a complicated relationship with the distribution of permeability and conductivity as well as oscillation modes.
ARAI et al. (Wed,) studied this question.