A Hydraulic Reciprocating Rod Seal’s Life Evaluation Method Incorporating Failure Mechanism Analysis and Test Observation Data

Abstract

Reciprocating rod seals are widely used in hydraulic systems. Their useful life and reliability affect that of the system. Degradation modeling is necessary to evaluate the useful life of the seal. Seal wear is one of the important forms of hydraulic reciprocating rod seal degradation, yet it is difficult to measure through direct methods. Because seal wear determines the leakage of the seal, we therefore consider the seal leakage as the performance degradation index. Furthermore, the degradation of the seal is always associated with random effects, which cannot be considered by theoretical failure mechanism analysis. Hence, stochastic processes are applied to consider the random effects. Considering the error between the measured value and its real degradation state caused by the measurement environment or other factors, we introduce the measurement error term into the Wiener process model and develop the corresponding Wiener process life prediction model. Finally, the failure mechanism analysis and test measurement data are fused to predict the life cycle of the hydraulic reciprocating rod seals. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparing the predicted degradation and the experimental observations.