TY - CONF A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Characterisation of degradation and determination of end-of-lifetime criterion for O-ring seals N2 - The ageing of polymers, including elastomers, is an undesirable but inevitable process leading to a limited lifetime of rubber products such as seals. Independent of the application, as e.g. automotive, piping or container applications, a long lifetime or at least a timely exchange of a seal before occurence of critical failure is desired. In order to investigate the degradation of material properties and to determine the lifetime of elastomers used as seals, an ageing programme was started with hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR), ethylene propylene diene rubber (EPDM) and fluorocarbon rubber (FKM) [1-3]. Both O-ring seals (uncompressed and compressed by 25 %) with a cord diameter of 10 mm as well as sheets with a thickness of 2 mm were aged at 75 °C, 100 °C, 125 °C and 150 °C for up to two years. The changes of material properties during ageing were characterised for each material using the sheets by means of e.g. dynamic-mechanical analysis and tensile tests, while sealing properties such as compression stress relaxation (CSR), compression set (CS) and leakage rate were determined on O-rings. The experimental results indicate that while material properties, CSR and CS show considerable degradation effects, the static leakage rate stays constant or even decreases before failure occurs quite suddenly at advanced degradation levels. This reveals that static leakage rate has only limited sensitivity for the degradation of the seal material. Our approach to determine a suitable end of lifetime criterion, which involves a partial decompression of the seal during the leakage test, is presented and discussed. T2 - RubberCon 2017 CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 23.05.2017 KW - Rubber seal KW - Ageing KW - Leakage PY - 2017 AN - OPUS4-40381 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Kömmling, Anja A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Wolff, Dietmar T1 - Characterisation of degradation and determination of end-of-lifetime criterion for O-ring seals N2 - The ageing of polymers, including elastomers, is an undesirable but inevitable process leading to a limited lifetime of rubber products such as seals. Independent of the application, as e.g. in automotive, piping or container applications, a long lifetime or at least a timely exchange of a seal before occurrence of critical failure is desired. In order to investigate the degradation of material properties and to determine the lifetime of elastomers used as seals, an ageing programme was started with hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR), ethylene propylene diene rubber (EPDM) and fluorocarbon rubber (FKM) [1-3]. Both O-ring seals (uncompressed and compressed by 25 %) with a cord diameter of 10 mm as well as sheets with a thickness of 2 mm were aged at 75 °C, 100 °C, 125 °C and 150 °C for up to two years. The changes of material properties during ageing were characterised for each material using samples from the sheets by means of e.g. Dynamic Mechanical Analysis and tensile tests, while sealing properties such as leakage rate were determined on O-rings. The experimental results indicate that while material properties show considerable degradation effects, the static leakage rate stays constant or even decreases before failure occurs quite suddenly at advanced degradation levels. This reveals that static leakage rate has only limited sensitivity for the degradation of the seal material. Our approach to determine a suitable end of lifetime criterion, which involves a partial decompression of the seal during the leakage test, is presented and discussed. T2 - RubberCon 2017 CY - Prague, Czech Republic DA - 23.05.2017 KW - Life time prediction KW - Ageing KW - Rubber seal KW - Leakage PY - 2017 SN - 978-80-906662-0-7 SP - 65 EP - 72 AN - OPUS4-40391 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 -