Piergiorgio Alotto - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Piergiorgio Alotto

Research paper thumbnail of Optimization of IPM motors with Machaon rotor flux barriers

Digests of the 2010 14th Biennial IEEE Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation, 2010

ABSTRACT The interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor is normally designed with two or more flux bar... more ABSTRACT The interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor is normally designed with two or more flux barriers per pole. The form of such flux barriers has a direct impact on the torque developed by the IPM motor, including both average value and ripple. The Machaon structure is formed by flux barriers of different shape, greatly reducing the torque ripple. Their shape must be optimized based on the number of poles, slots, winding arrangements, and PM volume. At this aim a stochastic optimizer is applied in order to find the best shape of the flux barriers with the twofold objective of achieving a smooth with a high average value.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-physics model for regenerative PEM fuel cell energy storage

2013 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2013

ABSTRACT Electrochemical storage (ECES) systems are expected to become increasingly important and... more ABSTRACT Electrochemical storage (ECES) systems are expected to become increasingly important and widespread in the coming years, with the expansion of renewable energy sources, smart grids and electrical vehicles. Special advantages can be provided by those ECESs which can be independently sized in power and stored energy. Some of the most promising technologies of this type are redox flow batteries and fuel cells combined to electrolyzers. Both these technologies are under extensive R&D programs, aimed at improving their performance. As regards the latter, regenerative fuel cells (R-FCs) provide both charge and discharge functions in the same device. This paper presents a unified model able to describe both these operation modes of R-FCs of the PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) type (R-PEMFC). The model takes into account the dependence of the electrical quantities and parameters on the major physical-chemical variables and can be used to address structural and operational optimizations.

Research paper thumbnail of Electromagnetic Device Optimization with Stochastic Methods

Stochastic Optimization - Seeing the Optimal for the Uncertain, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of Improved differential evolution optimization algorithm for the design of a brushless DC wheel motor

Digests of the 2010 14th Biennial IEEE Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation, CEFC 2010, 2010

ABSTRACT Conference code: 81103, Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus, Art. No.: 5481325, do... more ABSTRACT Conference code: 81103, Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus, Art. No.: 5481325, doi: 10.1109/CEFC.2010.5481325, Language of Original Document: English, Correspondence Address: Dos Santos Coelho, L.; Automation and Systems Laboratory, Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, References: Brisset, S., Brochet, P., Analytical model for the optimal design of a brushless DC wheel motor (2005) COMPEL, 24 (3), pp. 829-848;, Sponsors: IEEE Magnetics Society

Research paper thumbnail of Classical physical problems

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, 2013

The cell method presented in the previous chapters can be applied to different classes of physica... more The cell method presented in the previous chapters can be applied to different classes of physical problems. Some of these classes are presented in this chapter, in both static and time-varying formulations, together with a short explanation of their main characteristics. All the CM results have been obtained by means of the DualLab research software [1].

Research paper thumbnail of Mitigation of residential magnetic fields generated by MV/LV substations

The design of a magnetic shielding arrangement for an indoor substation is considered. The aim of... more The design of a magnetic shielding arrangement for an indoor substation is considered. The aim of the intervention is to reduce the magnetic field intensity inside a room above the substation. Stray fields are mitigated by using metallic screens and by rearranging LV cables in order to limit intervention costs. A three-dimensional electromagnetic analysis of stray fields is performed by

Research paper thumbnail of Redox flow batteries for the storage of renewable energy: A review

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2014

The need for grid-connected energy storage systems will grow worldwide in the next future due to ... more The need for grid-connected energy storage systems will grow worldwide in the next future due to the expansion of intermittent renewable energy sources and the inherent request for services of power quality and energy management. Electrochemical storage systems will be a solution of choice in many applications because of their localization flexibility, efficiency, scalability, and other appealing features. Among them redox flow batteries (RFBs) exhibit very high potential for several reasons, including power/energy independent sizing, high efficiency, room temperature operation, and extremely long charge/discharge cycle life. RFB technologies make use of different metal ion couples as reacting species. The best-researched and already commercially exploited types are all-vanadium redox batteries, but several research programs on other redox couples are underway in a number of countries. These programs aim at achieving major improvements resulting in more compact and cheaper systems, which can take the technology to a real breakthrough in stationary grid-connected applications.

Research paper thumbnail of Modeling and control of fuel cell-battery hybrid power systems for portable electronics

2008 43rd International Universities Power Engineering Conference, 2008

... Piergiorgio Alotto, Massimo Guarnieri, Federico Moro Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Un... more ... Piergiorgio Alotto, Massimo Guarnieri, Federico Moro Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Università di Padova, Italy moro@die.unipd.it ... in series, in order to attain acceptable input voltage levels on full load (2-2.4 V). On the battery side, an H-bridge buck-boost converter ...

Research paper thumbnail of An efficient hybrid algorithm for the optimization of problems with several local minima

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2001

The problem of design optimization is of high industrial interest, and has been extensively studi... more The problem of design optimization is of high industrial interest, and has been extensively studied for years, with excellent results. However, there is the well-known issue of a reasonable balance between the computational effort usually required by stochastic methods, and the fact that ...

Research paper thumbnail of Error estimation and adaptive meshing in 3D electrostatic and magnetostatic problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1998

A local error estimation and adaptive meshing method developed by some of the authors for finite ... more A local error estimation and adaptive meshing method developed by some of the authors for finite element analysis of 2D electrostatic and magnetostatic problems is now extended to 3D problems. The problems are formulated in terms of scalar potentials and discretized on a tetrahedral mesh using linear shape functions. Local error is estimated by approximately solving an independent differential problem in each tetrahedral element. The elements selected for refinement are subdivided by adding nodes inside the element, or along an edge, depending on their geometrical quality factor. Index terms-Error analysis, finite element methods, magnetostatics, electrostatic analysis. aforementioned error estimation procedure with an hrefinement technique. Similar approaches can be found in [ 5 ] and [61, but are restricted to electrostatic problems involving only one dielectric material. In the authors' knowledge, adaptive meshing has never been applied to a 3D magnetostatic formulation in term of scalar potentials.

Research paper thumbnail of A multiquadrics-based algorithm for the acceleration of simulated annealing optimization procedures

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1996

... 3, MAY 1996 A Multiquadrics-based Algorithm for the Acceleration of Simulated Annealing Optim... more ... 3, MAY 1996 A Multiquadrics-based Algorithm for the Acceleration of Simulated Annealing Optimization Procedures P. Alotto*, A. Caili+, G ... Elettrica Industriale, Politecnico di Torino, 1-10129 Torino, Italy Abstract—A procedure to significantly reduce the computational cost of the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Efficient use of the local discontinuous Galerkin method for meshes sliding on a circular boundary

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2002

In this paper, the coupling of discontinuous finite elements (FEs) with standard conforming ones ... more In this paper, the coupling of discontinuous finite elements (FEs) with standard conforming ones is applied to the special case of rotating electrical machines. The proposed scheme exploits the capability of discontinuous methods of dealing with nonmatching grids, and the lower computational cost of conforming methods, by using first ones only where needed. Therefore, the technique is ideally suited for the treatment of the air-gap region of such devices where the rotation of one part of the mesh generates hanging nodes. The resulting purely finite flement scheme is applied to the TEAM 24 benchmark problem. Index Terms-Discontinuous finite elements, electrical machines, variational methods.

Research paper thumbnail of A "design of experiment" and statistical approach to enhance the "generalised response surface" method in the optimisation of multiminima problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1997

The present paper discusses the use of different, "Design of Experiment" and statistical theory b... more The present paper discusses the use of different, "Design of Experiment" and statistical theory based methods to improve and speed up the "Generalised Response Surface Method", using multiquadrics to describe the objective function in parameter space, for the optimization of multiminima design problems in magnetics. The effectiveness of the proposed approach to enhance the convergence of stochastic optimisation algorithms is tested on a couple of test problems and results are discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of Parallelisation of electromagnetic simulation codes

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1998

In this paper results obtained from the parallelisation of existing 3D electromagnetic Finite Ele... more In this paper results obtained from the parallelisation of existing 3D electromagnetic Finite Element codes within the ESPRIT HPCN project PARTEL are presented. The parallelisation procedure, based on the Bulk Synchronous Parallel approach, is outlined and the encouraging results obtained in terms of speed-up on some industrially significant test cases are described and discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of A Coupled Thermo-Electromagnetic Formulation Based on the Cell Method

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of Loney's Solenoid Design Using an Artificial Immune Network With Local Search Based on the Simplex Method

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of A Mortar Cell Method for Electro-Thermal Contact Problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2013

A 3-D mortar domain decomposition approach based on the cell method (CM) for analyzing electro-th... more A 3-D mortar domain decomposition approach based on the cell method (CM) for analyzing electro-thermal contact problems is presented. The computational domain is subdivided into non-overlapping regions discretized according to the CM, where variables and field equations are expressed directly in integral form suitable for coupling the contact problem to the electro-thermal one in the bulk regions. Voltage and temperature discontinuities at contact interfaces are modeled by diagonal conductance matrices. The electrical and thermal continuity between contacting regions is enforced by means of dual Lagrange multipliers. Nonlinear equations are cast into a saddle-point form ensuring existence and uniqueness of the solution. Problem size is reduced by the Schur complement approach. A 3-D finite-element software for multiphysics problems is used to validate the mortar cell method.

Research paper thumbnail of Improved Bacterial Foraging Strategy Applied to TEAM Workshop Benchmark Problem

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2010

During the course of evolution living organisms have developed a very complex behavior, sophistic... more During the course of evolution living organisms have developed a very complex behavior, sophisticated communication capabilities, distributed colony control, group foraging strategies, and a high degree of cooperation when tackling tasks. Bio-inspired optimization techniques, which operate in analogy to the swarming and social behavior found in nature, have been adopted to solve a variety of engineering problems. In this paper, an optimization strategy based on an improved bacterial foraging strategy based on Gaussian distribution is proposed. The validity of the algorithm is tested on the TEAM Workshop Benchmark Problem 22, and results are compared with standard and advanced particle swarm approaches, showing the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.

Research paper thumbnail of A Cell Method Formulation of 3-D Electrothermomechanical Contact Problems With Mortar Discretization

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2012

A 3-D domain decomposition method for fully coupled electrothermomechanical contact problems is p... more A 3-D domain decomposition method for fully coupled electrothermomechanical contact problems is presented. The formulation is based on the cell method. Contacting domains are linked together by introducing a new reference frame (i.e., the mortar surface). Field discontinuities across contact interfaces are simulated by suitable constitutive operators. It is shown that the same coupling strategy can be adopted for the electrical, thermal, and mechanical contact problems. Compatibility constraints are imposed by means of dual Lagrange multipliers defined on the mortar surface. Coupled nonlinear algebraic equations are finally cast into a saddle-point problem, which is resolved by combining the Schur complement method with the Newton-Raphson method. The proposed mortar approach is validated with a commercial 3-D finite-element method multiphysics software package.

Research paper thumbnail of Optimal Design of Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cells for Low-Power Applications

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2009

Competitive costs, rapid recharge, and high-energy density make small direct methanol fuel cells ... more Competitive costs, rapid recharge, and high-energy density make small direct methanol fuel cells promising power sources for electronic equipment. Cell performance depends on several parameters, including current density, methanol concentration, and catalyst loadings. In this paper, a 1-D analytical model able to simulate the cell performance is interfaced to a stochastic optimization procedure in order to maximize the battery duration while minimizing methanol crossover.

Research paper thumbnail of Optimization of IPM motors with Machaon rotor flux barriers

Digests of the 2010 14th Biennial IEEE Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation, 2010

ABSTRACT The interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor is normally designed with two or more flux bar... more ABSTRACT The interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor is normally designed with two or more flux barriers per pole. The form of such flux barriers has a direct impact on the torque developed by the IPM motor, including both average value and ripple. The Machaon structure is formed by flux barriers of different shape, greatly reducing the torque ripple. Their shape must be optimized based on the number of poles, slots, winding arrangements, and PM volume. At this aim a stochastic optimizer is applied in order to find the best shape of the flux barriers with the twofold objective of achieving a smooth with a high average value.

Research paper thumbnail of Multi-physics model for regenerative PEM fuel cell energy storage

2013 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2013

ABSTRACT Electrochemical storage (ECES) systems are expected to become increasingly important and... more ABSTRACT Electrochemical storage (ECES) systems are expected to become increasingly important and widespread in the coming years, with the expansion of renewable energy sources, smart grids and electrical vehicles. Special advantages can be provided by those ECESs which can be independently sized in power and stored energy. Some of the most promising technologies of this type are redox flow batteries and fuel cells combined to electrolyzers. Both these technologies are under extensive R&D programs, aimed at improving their performance. As regards the latter, regenerative fuel cells (R-FCs) provide both charge and discharge functions in the same device. This paper presents a unified model able to describe both these operation modes of R-FCs of the PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) type (R-PEMFC). The model takes into account the dependence of the electrical quantities and parameters on the major physical-chemical variables and can be used to address structural and operational optimizations.

Research paper thumbnail of Electromagnetic Device Optimization with Stochastic Methods

Stochastic Optimization - Seeing the Optimal for the Uncertain, 2011

Research paper thumbnail of Improved differential evolution optimization algorithm for the design of a brushless DC wheel motor

Digests of the 2010 14th Biennial IEEE Conference on Electromagnetic Field Computation, CEFC 2010, 2010

ABSTRACT Conference code: 81103, Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus, Art. No.: 5481325, do... more ABSTRACT Conference code: 81103, Export Date: 19 July 2012, Source: Scopus, Art. No.: 5481325, doi: 10.1109/CEFC.2010.5481325, Language of Original Document: English, Correspondence Address: Dos Santos Coelho, L.; Automation and Systems Laboratory, Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil, References: Brisset, S., Brochet, P., Analytical model for the optimal design of a brushless DC wheel motor (2005) COMPEL, 24 (3), pp. 829-848;, Sponsors: IEEE Magnetics Society

Research paper thumbnail of Classical physical problems

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, 2013

The cell method presented in the previous chapters can be applied to different classes of physica... more The cell method presented in the previous chapters can be applied to different classes of physical problems. Some of these classes are presented in this chapter, in both static and time-varying formulations, together with a short explanation of their main characteristics. All the CM results have been obtained by means of the DualLab research software [1].

Research paper thumbnail of Mitigation of residential magnetic fields generated by MV/LV substations

The design of a magnetic shielding arrangement for an indoor substation is considered. The aim of... more The design of a magnetic shielding arrangement for an indoor substation is considered. The aim of the intervention is to reduce the magnetic field intensity inside a room above the substation. Stray fields are mitigated by using metallic screens and by rearranging LV cables in order to limit intervention costs. A three-dimensional electromagnetic analysis of stray fields is performed by

Research paper thumbnail of Redox flow batteries for the storage of renewable energy: A review

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2014

The need for grid-connected energy storage systems will grow worldwide in the next future due to ... more The need for grid-connected energy storage systems will grow worldwide in the next future due to the expansion of intermittent renewable energy sources and the inherent request for services of power quality and energy management. Electrochemical storage systems will be a solution of choice in many applications because of their localization flexibility, efficiency, scalability, and other appealing features. Among them redox flow batteries (RFBs) exhibit very high potential for several reasons, including power/energy independent sizing, high efficiency, room temperature operation, and extremely long charge/discharge cycle life. RFB technologies make use of different metal ion couples as reacting species. The best-researched and already commercially exploited types are all-vanadium redox batteries, but several research programs on other redox couples are underway in a number of countries. These programs aim at achieving major improvements resulting in more compact and cheaper systems, which can take the technology to a real breakthrough in stationary grid-connected applications.

Research paper thumbnail of Modeling and control of fuel cell-battery hybrid power systems for portable electronics

2008 43rd International Universities Power Engineering Conference, 2008

... Piergiorgio Alotto, Massimo Guarnieri, Federico Moro Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Un... more ... Piergiorgio Alotto, Massimo Guarnieri, Federico Moro Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Università di Padova, Italy moro@die.unipd.it ... in series, in order to attain acceptable input voltage levels on full load (2-2.4 V). On the battery side, an H-bridge buck-boost converter ...

Research paper thumbnail of An efficient hybrid algorithm for the optimization of problems with several local minima

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2001

The problem of design optimization is of high industrial interest, and has been extensively studi... more The problem of design optimization is of high industrial interest, and has been extensively studied for years, with excellent results. However, there is the well-known issue of a reasonable balance between the computational effort usually required by stochastic methods, and the fact that ...

Research paper thumbnail of Error estimation and adaptive meshing in 3D electrostatic and magnetostatic problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1998

A local error estimation and adaptive meshing method developed by some of the authors for finite ... more A local error estimation and adaptive meshing method developed by some of the authors for finite element analysis of 2D electrostatic and magnetostatic problems is now extended to 3D problems. The problems are formulated in terms of scalar potentials and discretized on a tetrahedral mesh using linear shape functions. Local error is estimated by approximately solving an independent differential problem in each tetrahedral element. The elements selected for refinement are subdivided by adding nodes inside the element, or along an edge, depending on their geometrical quality factor. Index terms-Error analysis, finite element methods, magnetostatics, electrostatic analysis. aforementioned error estimation procedure with an hrefinement technique. Similar approaches can be found in [ 5 ] and [61, but are restricted to electrostatic problems involving only one dielectric material. In the authors' knowledge, adaptive meshing has never been applied to a 3D magnetostatic formulation in term of scalar potentials.

Research paper thumbnail of A multiquadrics-based algorithm for the acceleration of simulated annealing optimization procedures

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1996

... 3, MAY 1996 A Multiquadrics-based Algorithm for the Acceleration of Simulated Annealing Optim... more ... 3, MAY 1996 A Multiquadrics-based Algorithm for the Acceleration of Simulated Annealing Optimization Procedures P. Alotto*, A. Caili+, G ... Elettrica Industriale, Politecnico di Torino, 1-10129 Torino, Italy Abstract—A procedure to significantly reduce the computational cost of the ...

Research paper thumbnail of Efficient use of the local discontinuous Galerkin method for meshes sliding on a circular boundary

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2002

In this paper, the coupling of discontinuous finite elements (FEs) with standard conforming ones ... more In this paper, the coupling of discontinuous finite elements (FEs) with standard conforming ones is applied to the special case of rotating electrical machines. The proposed scheme exploits the capability of discontinuous methods of dealing with nonmatching grids, and the lower computational cost of conforming methods, by using first ones only where needed. Therefore, the technique is ideally suited for the treatment of the air-gap region of such devices where the rotation of one part of the mesh generates hanging nodes. The resulting purely finite flement scheme is applied to the TEAM 24 benchmark problem. Index Terms-Discontinuous finite elements, electrical machines, variational methods.

Research paper thumbnail of A "design of experiment" and statistical approach to enhance the "generalised response surface" method in the optimisation of multiminima problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1997

The present paper discusses the use of different, "Design of Experiment" and statistical theory b... more The present paper discusses the use of different, "Design of Experiment" and statistical theory based methods to improve and speed up the "Generalised Response Surface Method", using multiquadrics to describe the objective function in parameter space, for the optimization of multiminima design problems in magnetics. The effectiveness of the proposed approach to enhance the convergence of stochastic optimisation algorithms is tested on a couple of test problems and results are discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of Parallelisation of electromagnetic simulation codes

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 1998

In this paper results obtained from the parallelisation of existing 3D electromagnetic Finite Ele... more In this paper results obtained from the parallelisation of existing 3D electromagnetic Finite Element codes within the ESPRIT HPCN project PARTEL are presented. The parallelisation procedure, based on the Bulk Synchronous Parallel approach, is outlined and the encouraging results obtained in terms of speed-up on some industrially significant test cases are described and discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of A Coupled Thermo-Electromagnetic Formulation Based on the Cell Method

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of Loney's Solenoid Design Using an Artificial Immune Network With Local Search Based on the Simplex Method

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of A Mortar Cell Method for Electro-Thermal Contact Problems

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2013

A 3-D mortar domain decomposition approach based on the cell method (CM) for analyzing electro-th... more A 3-D mortar domain decomposition approach based on the cell method (CM) for analyzing electro-thermal contact problems is presented. The computational domain is subdivided into non-overlapping regions discretized according to the CM, where variables and field equations are expressed directly in integral form suitable for coupling the contact problem to the electro-thermal one in the bulk regions. Voltage and temperature discontinuities at contact interfaces are modeled by diagonal conductance matrices. The electrical and thermal continuity between contacting regions is enforced by means of dual Lagrange multipliers. Nonlinear equations are cast into a saddle-point form ensuring existence and uniqueness of the solution. Problem size is reduced by the Schur complement approach. A 3-D finite-element software for multiphysics problems is used to validate the mortar cell method.

Research paper thumbnail of Improved Bacterial Foraging Strategy Applied to TEAM Workshop Benchmark Problem

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2010

During the course of evolution living organisms have developed a very complex behavior, sophistic... more During the course of evolution living organisms have developed a very complex behavior, sophisticated communication capabilities, distributed colony control, group foraging strategies, and a high degree of cooperation when tackling tasks. Bio-inspired optimization techniques, which operate in analogy to the swarming and social behavior found in nature, have been adopted to solve a variety of engineering problems. In this paper, an optimization strategy based on an improved bacterial foraging strategy based on Gaussian distribution is proposed. The validity of the algorithm is tested on the TEAM Workshop Benchmark Problem 22, and results are compared with standard and advanced particle swarm approaches, showing the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach.

Research paper thumbnail of A Cell Method Formulation of 3-D Electrothermomechanical Contact Problems With Mortar Discretization

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2012

A 3-D domain decomposition method for fully coupled electrothermomechanical contact problems is p... more A 3-D domain decomposition method for fully coupled electrothermomechanical contact problems is presented. The formulation is based on the cell method. Contacting domains are linked together by introducing a new reference frame (i.e., the mortar surface). Field discontinuities across contact interfaces are simulated by suitable constitutive operators. It is shown that the same coupling strategy can be adopted for the electrical, thermal, and mechanical contact problems. Compatibility constraints are imposed by means of dual Lagrange multipliers defined on the mortar surface. Coupled nonlinear algebraic equations are finally cast into a saddle-point problem, which is resolved by combining the Schur complement method with the Newton-Raphson method. The proposed mortar approach is validated with a commercial 3-D finite-element method multiphysics software package.

Research paper thumbnail of Optimal Design of Micro Direct Methanol Fuel Cells for Low-Power Applications

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 2009

Competitive costs, rapid recharge, and high-energy density make small direct methanol fuel cells ... more Competitive costs, rapid recharge, and high-energy density make small direct methanol fuel cells promising power sources for electronic equipment. Cell performance depends on several parameters, including current density, methanol concentration, and catalyst loadings. In this paper, a 1-D analytical model able to simulate the cell performance is interfaced to a stochastic optimization procedure in order to maximize the battery duration while minimizing methanol crossover.