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At BAM, which is a 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 assessment of elastomeric seals applied in the casks. One of the aims is to identify a suitable method for estimating the service lifetime of the seals 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) for up to five years. In order to assess sealability, O-rings were 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 were aged as well. In order to understand the underlying ageing mechanisms in each material, material properties such as hardness, density and tensile properties were examined. Additionally, compression set (CS), which represents the recovery behaviour of a seal after release from compression, is measured. For obtaining 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 ageing caused by diffusion-limited oxidation (DLO) effects especially for HNBR, resulting in distorted bulk properties such as compression set. However, if DLO-affected data is excluded, extrapolations of CS data are possible using time-temperature shifts.
For selecting an appropriate end-of-lifetime criterion, leakage rate measurements were performed, since leakage rate is the only characteristic directly correlated to the performance of the sealing system. A significant increase in leakage rate was considered as the end of the lifetime. However, the O-rings remained leak tight under static conditions even though material properties had already degraded strongly. For this reason, a modified, more demanding leakage test involving a fast small decompression of the seal was developed that allowed determining a more conservative end-of-lifetime criterion with a safety margin for EPDM seals. FKM, which is a very heat and oxidation resistant material, exhibited only little degradation, even though it had the smallest activation energy.
Aus Rapsöl gewonnener Biodiesel ist eine umweltfreundliche Alternative zu fossilen Energiequellen. In der Europäischen Union, in der 80 % der ölhaltigen Brennstoffe importiert werden müssen, besteht zudem ein Interesse, die Abhängigkeit von exter-nen Ölversorgern zu reduzieren.
Bei jeder Veränderung der Zusammensetzung eines Brennstoffs muss auch die Ma-terialverträglichkeit gewährleistet bleiben. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob Elastomere im Vergleich zu reinem Heizöl auch in Heizöl mit 20 % Biodiesel (B20) beständig sind.
Die Polarität des Biodiesels erhöht die Quellung und fördert die Permeation und Ex-traktion. Sowohl Quellung als auch Extraktion bedingen Änderungen der physikali-schen Eigenschaften der Elastomere. Extraktion verändert die chemische des Heiz-öls. Diese chemischen Veränderungen können auch den Abbau (Hydrolyse und Oxi-dation) der Polymere durch das Herauslösen von Additiven und Stabilisatoren be-schleunigen.
Ziel dieser Arbeit war die Bestimmung der Beständigkeit der Elastomere ACM (Poly-acrylatkautschuk), HNBR (Hydrierter Acrylnitrilbutadienkautschuk), FKM (Fluorkaut-schuk) und PUR (Polyurethan) in Heizöl und im Heizölgemisch B20.
Prüfkörper der Elastomere wurden für 42 Tage (Härteprüfung) und 84 Tage (Zugprü-fung) bei 40 °C ausgelagert. Anschließend wurde die Änderung der Masse, Shore Härte A, Zugfestigkeit, und Reißdehnung bezogen auf die Werte vor der Aus-lagerung bestimmt. Die weniger zur Quellung neigenden Elastomere FKM und HNBR wurden zusätzlich bei 70 °C ausgelagert.
Um die Elastomere im verpressten Zustand zu testen, wurde der Druckverformungs-rest nach DIN ISO 815 bestimmt. Hierzu wurden zylindrische Prüfkörper aus ACM, HNBR und FKM verpresst und in Heizöl und Heizöl mit 20 % FAME für 3, 7, 14, 28, 56 und 90 Tage bei 40 °C ausgelagert. Anschließend wurde über die Dickenmes-sung der Druckverformungsrest ermittelt. Zum Vergleich wurden Prüfkörper verpresst und ohne Medium bei 40 °C ausgelagert.
In den internationalen Normen wurde kein Grenzwert für die Veränderung der Zugei-genschaften und der Härte für eine positive Bewertung der Beständigkeit festgelegt. Deshalb wurde in der BAM ein Grenzwert von 15 % für die Beständigkeitsbewertung herangezogen.
Bei 40 °C lag die Änderung der Zugeigenschaften und der Shore Härte von ACM, HNBR und FKM in Heizöl und in B20 unter 15 %. Folglich sind ACM, HNBR und FKM bei 40 °C in Heizöl und in B20 beständig. PUR ist bei 40 °C in Heizöl beständig, je-doch nicht für eine Verwendung in B20 geeignet, da sich die Zugfestigkeit und Reiß-dehnung um 50 % vermindert haben.
Bei 70 °C ist FKM in Heizöl und B20 beständig, wohingegen HNBR an seine Einsatz-grenzen gelangt und unbeständig ist, in B20 haben sich die Zugfestigkeit um 40 % und die Reißdehnung um 50 % reduziert.
Elastomeric O-ring seals are used in a wide range of applications due to their excellent elasticity. However, like all polymers, elastomers degrade under the influence of e.g. time, temperature, oxygen, radiation and mechanical stress. Especially in applications where a replacement of seals after a certain time is hard or almost impossible, it is important to know the seal lifetime. Therefore, an extensive ageing programme with elastomers made of EPDM, HNBR and other materials was started with the aim of determining suitable methods for accelerated ageing and lifetime prediction.
In order to determine the lifetime of polymeric parts, the time-temperature superposition principle is commonly used to shift property changes obtained by accelerated ageing at higher temperatures to lower temperatures. If the shift factors yield a straight line in an Arrhenius diagram, a corresponding activation energy can be determined. However, we have found that the shift factors and thus the predicted lifetime depends on the test method that yielded the shifted data. For example, the shift factor between 125 °C and 150 °C ageing temperature was roughly the same (5/5/4.5 respectively) for hardness, density and maximum of loss factor tan measured on HNBR, but different for elongation at break (8) and compression set (2.2, excluding DLO-affected data). A possible explanation might be that while the different oxidation reactions proceed with a fixed activation energy, they have differing impact on the measured properties. For example, hardness is lowered by chain scission reactions, and increases by crosslinking reactions during ageing. As usually both chain scission and crosslinking reactions occur during ageing, the measured hardness increase reflects only the net effect of both reaction types. On the other hand, compression set is influenced additively by both reaction types: chain scission leads to an increase of the remaining deformation, as broken chains lose their recovery potential, and crosslinking reactions during ageing fix the compressed geometry, which also leads to less recovery. Thus, compression set reflects the total number of changes in the network and shows degradation effects much faster, which results in lower shift factors and lower activation energy. This phenomenon was observed for EPDM as well.
In order to verify our hypotheses and to gain further insights, temperature-dependent oxygen consumption measurements are currently being performed and results will be presented at the conference. The shift factors and activation energy determined by oxygen consumption measurements are expected to be close to the values for compression set.