A Surface Connectivity-Based Approach for Leakage Channel Prediction in Static Sealing Interface

Abstract

Leakage susceptibility is significant for the functionalization of engineering products, and surface topography plays a crucial role in forming the leakage channel in static sealing interface. This paper proposes a surface connectivity-based approach to predict the leakage channel in static sealing interface. The proposed approach consists of three modules including contact surface generation, leakage parameters definition, and leakage channel prediction. A high-definition metrology (HDM) instrument is adopted to measure the three-dimensional (3D) surface. The contact surface that can be considered as the sealing interface is generated by assembling the virtual gasket surface and waviness surface. Considering the spatial connectivity, two kinds of leakage parameters including connectivity parameters and correlation parameters are proposed to describe the characteristics of the contact surface. Meantime, a novel prediction algorithm is developed to directly indicate the potential leakage channel of the surface. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is valid to be accurate and effective, which can provide valuable information for surface topography and static sealing performance.