TY - JOUR A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Goral, Milan A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Insights for lifetime predictions of O-ring seals from five-year long-term aging tests N2 - O-rings made of HNBR, EPDM and FKM were aged in the compressed and uncompressed state at 150 °C, 125 °C, 100 °C, 75 °C, 60 °C and 23 °C for aging times of up to five years. Hardness was measured and increased with aging time and temperature for HNBR and EPDM, but it remained practically constant for FKM. Indenter modulus measurements were performed on the lateral O-ring surface (that was free of DLO effects) to assess an influence of the compression during aging, but none was detected. The equilibrium compression set (CS) exhibited faster and stronger degradation than hardness and was used for lifetime predictions using the time-temperature superposition (TTS) principle. With an end-of-lifetime criterion of 70 % CS, lifetimes of 4.5 years, 50 years and 526 years at 75 °C were estimated for HNBR, EPDM and FKM, respectively. The activation energies derived from an Arrhenius plot of the shift factors from the TTS were 85 kJ/mol, 99 kJ/mol and 78 kJ/mol for HNBR, EPDM and FKM, respectively, revealing that a higher activation energy does not necessarily mean that the material has a higher lifetime at lower temperatures. Furthermore, the measured lifetime of EPDM O-rings at 100 °C (5 years) was compared to that predicted on the basis of the lifetime at 150 °C as well as 125 °C using the corresponding shift factors. The error of the prediction was only ± 4 %. However, this precise prediction could only be achieved using the five-year long-term aging data. When using only data from aging times up to 0.5 years and 2 years, the lifetime of EPDM O-rings at 100 °C was underestimated by 31 % and 22 %, respectively. KW - HNBR KW - EPDM KW - FKM KW - DLO KW - Hardness KW - Compression set KW - Rubber KW - Elastomer KW - Degradation PY - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2020.109278 VL - 179 SP - 109278 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-51060 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Effects of heterogeneous aging in compressed HNBR and EPDM O-ring seals N2 - Seals used in containers for dangerous goods need to maintain leak tightness for several decades. For investigating the change in seal material properties during aging, a comprehensive aging program on both uncompressed and compressed EPDM and HNBR seals was started. In order to obtain results closely related to practical conditions, O-rings with a full-scale cord diameter of 10 mm were aged. However, this set-up can lead to heterogeneous aging caused by diffusion-limited oxidation (DLO) effects. These effects depend on material, dimensions, time and temperature. Heterogeneous aging results in distorted bulk properties such as compression stress relaxation and compression set (CS) suggesting that HNBR has better performance than EPDM at 150 °C but which is not the case at 100 °C. The presence of heterogeneous material properties was shown by hardness measurements across the seal cross-section. If DLO-affected data is excluded, extrapolations of CS data are possible using time-temperature shifts and Arrhenius graphs. Exemplary CS values of 50 % and 80 % would be reached after approx. 10 years and 29 years, respectively for HNBR and after approx. 400 years and 1100 years, respectively for EPDM. KW - Ageing KW - Rubber KW - Compression KW - DLO KW - Extrapolation KW - Lifetime prediction PY - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2016.01.012 VL - 126 SP - 39 EP - 46 PB - Elsevier Science CY - Oxford AN - OPUS4-35775 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Wolff, Dietmar ED - Grellmann, W. ED - Langer, B. T1 - Investigations of elastomeric seals – Low temperature performance and aging behavior N2 - Due to their simple and reliable application, elastomers are used for many tasks. Many fields of application like transport, aviation and process technology, entail low temperatures where proper functionality of the employed seals has to be ensured. Therefore, understanding the low temperature behavior of elastomeric seals is important for safe seal operation to restrict the temperature application range. For all areas of application, the question of seal lifetime is also important for replacement or maintenance intervals. The lifetime is especially important in applications that allow no seal replacement. Since the seal can determine the lifetime of storage in such cases, reliable lifetime estimation is necessary for these applications, and requires an extensive knowledge of the specific aging behavior. KW - Seal KW - Rubber KW - Ageing KW - Replacement PY - 2017 SN - 978-3-319-41877-3 SN - 978-3-319-41879-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41879-7_30 SN - 0933-033X SN - 2196-2812 VL - 247 SP - 431 EP - 443 PB - Springer Verlag AN - OPUS4-41167 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Pourmand, P. A1 - Wolff, Dietmar A1 - Gedde, U.W. T1 - Influence of ageing on sealability of elastomeric O-rings N2 - At BAM, which is the federal institute for materials research and testing in Germany, it is one of our tasks to evaluate the safety of casks designed for transport and/or storage of radioactive material. This includes the assessment of the service lifetime of elastomeric seals that are part of the container lid system with regard to the requirements for long-term safety (40 years and more) of the containers. Therefore, we started an accelerated ageing programme with selected rubbers often used for seals (HNBR, EPDM and FKM) which are aged at four different temperatures (75 °C, 100 °C, 125 °C and 150 °C) up to 1.5 years. In order to assess sealability, O-rings are aged in compression by 25 % (corresponding to the compression during service) between plates as well as in flanges that allow leakage rate measurements. For comparison, uncompressed O-rings are aged as well. Further methods characterising seal performance are compression stress relaxation (CSR) reflecting the loss of sealing force of a compressed seal over time, and compression set (CS) which represents the recovery behaviour of a seal after release from compression. Additionally, hardness is measured for information about the change of mechanical properties. The experimental results indicate that while hardness, CSR and CS show considerable degradation effects, the leakage rate stays relatively constant or even decreases until shrinkage combined with the loss of resilience of the aged seal leads to leakage. This demonstrates that static leakage rate, which is the only available direct seal performance criterion, has only limited sensitivity towards the degradation of the seal material. CS data is extrapolated using time-temperature shifts and Arrhenius graphs. An exemplary CS of 50 % would be reached after approx. 1.2, 17 and 29 years at 60 °C for HNBR, EPDM and FKM respectively. T2 - PolymerTec 2016 CY - Merseburg, Germany DA - 15.06.2016 KW - Compression KW - Leakage KW - Degradation KW - Rubber KW - Lifetime PY - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/masy.201600157 SN - 1022-1360 SN - 1521-3900 VL - 373 IS - 1 SP - UNSP 1600157, 1 EP - 10 PB - WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH CY - Weinheim AN - OPUS4-40958 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Horn, Jutta A1 - Völzke, Holger A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Long-Term Performance of Elastomer seals - From Aging Tests to Lifetime Estimations N2 - Elastomers show a high versatility which makes them ideal materials for sealing applications in various fields. Especially under changing application conditions the high recovery potential of this class of material is beneficial to compensate temperature or pressure fluctuation, and geometrical changes resulting from mechanical loads in e.g. accident conditions. Out of these reasons elastomers are also used in containers for low and intermediate level radioactive waste and for spent fuel transportation casks. In casks designed for low and intermediate level waste elastomer seals can act as primary seal responsible for the containment function whereas in spent fuel storage and transportation casks (dual purpose casks (DPC)) elastomer seals are used as auxiliary seals to allow leakage rate measurements of metal barrier seals. An inherent prerequisite for this kind of application is the Long time-scale of operation without or with limited possibility of seal replacement. In Germany an interim storage license for DPC`s is typically issued for 40 years, a timeframe which might increase in the future due to challenges of the final repository siting procedure. For low and intermediate level waste, also long time periods are required before final disposal can be achieved. Therefore, the performance of elastomer seals over extended time periods is, as for other applications, of high importance. A typical approach to ensure long-term functionality is to perform accelerated aging tests to calculate an estimated lifetime by assuming e.g. Arrhenius like equations for the timetemperature relationship. This approach requires a suitable end of life criterion considering the application of interest. This often can represent a challenge on its own. As BAM is involved in most of the cask licensing procedures and especially responsible for the evaluation of cask-related long-term safety issues we initiated several test programs for investigating the behavior of elastomer seals. Experiments concerning the low temperature performance down to -40 °C and the influence of gamma irradiation have been started first. Currently the thermal aging behavior of elastomer seals, which is the topic of this contribution, is examined. For our aging investigations we use a broad approach to first determine the property changes in different elastomer materials due to thermo-oxidative aging at elevated temperatures and secondly, we test how the typical methods of lifetime extrapolation can be applied to these results. This Approach enables us to detect and exclude undesired side effects which very often influence lifetime estimations. In this contribution, our recent results are extended. The results show that lifetime estimation based on single material properties can be misleading and therefore a combination of several methods is recommended. T2 - ASME 2018 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 15.07.2018 KW - Seal performance KW - Rubber KW - Ageing PY - 2018 VL - PVP2018 SP - 84631-1 EP - 84631-8 AN - OPUS4-46346 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -