On the Contact Behavior Analysis and New Design of O-ring Seals

This paper presents contact behavior of an Polyperfluoroalkoxyethylene(PTFE) ring seals by a non-linear finite element method using the thermomechanical analysis. PTFE elastomer was assumed as odgen model for numerical analysis in FEM commercial code because elastomer has nonlinear behaviour character. The shape effects are investigated for sealing performance of ring seal in boundary conditions which as gas pressure, groove temperature and various O-ring seal models. Also contact stress and equivalent total strain are investicated. An O-ring seals was modeled four shape which are circle, two sunflower and X. The highest contact stress occurs at sunflower-ring seal with groove deapth of 0.35mm. the equivalent total strain of sunflower-ring seal is lower than that of the others under low gas pressure condition but under gas pressure condition over 4Mpa, that of sunflower-ring seal is higher. The calculated FEM results shows that the Sunflower-ring seal with groove depth of 0.35mm has excellent performance compared with other seal models.