Many industries use seals to prevent fluid or gas leakage. Even a relatively simple looking seal, such as O-ring, depends on some quite unique properties of the
elastomer material from which it is manufactured to enable it to function reliably. New materials have dramatically extended the potential application areas with respect
to temperature range and fluid compatibility. However, there materials often necessitate specific design rules to accommodate their chracteristics. Dynamic seals have to be
optimized to provide both minimum leakage and mimimum friction and wear. The complex operational enviorments and material properties of seals require design and
analysis skills. Tau Enginneering offers such advanced design and analysis skills in engineering seals.
Static Seals
Static seals are widely used in automotive gearbos casing, pipe joint, vacuum chamber, or high pressure steam pipe/pressure vessel, and heat exchange. A variated form of
static seals are available in the market, e.g., O-ring, rectangular section, X section, T section, L section. In addition, some seals are desinged with two materials, such as,
metal bonded with elastomer seal, spring seal, and etc. These designs brings some advantages, but require more analysis to prevent excessive extrution and compressure. Tau Engineering
has strong capability on nonlinear analysis of the static seals.
Dynamic Seals
Dynamic seals include rotary and reciprocating seals. These two types of seals covers a very wide range of equipment and applications in many industries.
Each application of dynamic seals presents an individual set of design parameters based around the space, weight, and reliablity. The dynamic seals have to bear dynamic
cyclic loads with the sealing capability. Due to the working conditions, the design and analysis of the dynamic seals are very critical to a reliable application. Tau Engineering
uses advanced linear and nonlinear FEA skills to simulate the practical working condition of the dynamic seals, and provides a detailed assessment and optimization for your seals.
Packing Element
Packing elements are used in oil/gas drilling and completion operations. Packing elements are normally molded by a large set of elastomer and metals, thus ther are a type of
composite structure. Unlike other seals,
the sealing of packing elements requires large compressive force and thus induce large deformation. For some applications (e.g., MPD and RCD), the packing elements also experience
dynamic loads. The working conditions make the design of packing element complicated. Nonlinear properties of elastomer with linear properties of metal make the design difficult further.
In addition, the interface between elastomer and metal is also critical as it determines one of the major failure modes. Tau Engineering is experienced in design and analysis of
packing elements. We apply nonlinear FEA skills with advanced knowledge in elastomer and metal to optimize your packing element design.
