Contact Analysis Between Rubber Seal, a Spherical Particle and Coated Steel Surface

Abstract

Seals are very useful machine components in protection of leakage of lubricant or working fluid, and incoming of debris from outside. Various elastomer are widely used as sealing materials and the shaft surfaces are generally coated with high hardness material after heat treatment. It is generally known that the foreign debris and wear particles get stuck into sealing surface, the steel shaft surface can be damaged and worn by mainly abrasive wear. In this paper, using MARC, contact analysis are conducted to show the hard coated steel shaft surface can be fatigue failed by very small elastic particle intervened between seal and steel surface. Variations of contact and von-Mises stress distributions and contact half-widths with interference and coating thickness are presented. The maximum von-Mises stress occurs always in the coating layer or between coated layer/substrate interface. Therefore the coated sealing surface can be fatigued and then failed by very small particles. The results can be used in design of sealing surface and further studies are required.