The primary focus of this work is evaluation, modeling, and comparison of fuel cell properties for a sulfonated aromatic hydrocarbon polymer membrane under fuel cell operations against the standard commercial Nafion membrane. Membrane characterization of transport properties were reported. The fuel cell performance, current distribution mapping, and water balance measurements of both membrane were also examined at different humidity conditions. The studies show that at high RH, the hydrocarbon membrane gives better performance with less water flooding when compared with standard Nafion. However at low RH, where the membrane needs more hydration and conducting of the proton, the standard Nafion membrane shows higher performance than hydrocarbon membrane. Local distributions of current density, water content and liquid water in hydrocarbon membranes were simulated and compared with a Nafion 212 membrane. Both experimental data and model predictions show that the hydrocarbon membrane gives more uniform current distributions than that of the Nafion membrane. The computational model can predict water transport across the membrane and can be used to observe flooding in PEMFC. (C) The Author(s) 2018. Published by ECS.