Water management is the key issue for the cathode in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell, nearly all the humidified and generated water is flow out of the fuel cell through the outlet of the cathode. Cathode flooding can lead to dramatic performance decay and irrecoverable material degradation in fuel cell. Therefore, optimization design at the cathode outlet is a significant technical challenge for the performance and lifetime enhancement for fuel cell. To address this problem, this study optimized the opening size at cathode outlet of the fuel cell that operates under dead-ended anode mode. The designed cells were continuously operated for 100 h under dead-ended anode mode and the effect of opening size in cathode outlet on cell performance has been investigated. It was found that, with the increase in opening size at cathode outlet, the flooding electrode and the consequent carbon corrosion in catalyst layer can be substantially suppressed. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.