Finite Element Analysis provides data to predict how a seal product will function under certain situations and can help determine areas where the design could be improved without having to test a quantity of prototypes.
Here we clarify how our engineers use FEA to design optimum sealing solutions for our customer functions.
Why can we use Finite Element Analysis (FEA)?
Our engineers encounter many critical sealing functions with complicating influences. Envelope size, housing limitations, shaft speeds, pressure/temperature ratings and chemical media are all utility parameters that we should think about when designing a seal.
In isolation, the impression of those utility parameters is reasonably simple to predict when designing a sealing resolution. However, if you compound numerous these components (whilst typically pushing a few of them to their higher limit when sealing) it is essential to foretell what’s going to happen in actual utility conditions. Using FEA as a device, our engineers can confidently design after which manufacture robust, reliable, and cost-effective engineered sealing options for our customers.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) permits us to grasp and quantify the consequences of real-world conditions on a seal part or meeting. It can be utilized to establish potential causes the place sub-optimal sealing performance has been observed and can be used to guide the design of surrounding parts; especially for merchandise similar to diaphragms and boots where contact with adjacent components might need to be prevented.
The software program also allows force data to be extracted so that compressive forces for static seals, and friction forces for dynamic seals could be precisely predicted to help clients within the last design of their products.
How do we use FEA?
Starting with a 2D or 3D mannequin of the preliminary design concept, we apply the boundary circumstances and constraints supplied by a buyer; these can embody strain, pressure, temperatures, and any applied displacements. A suitable finite factor mesh is overlaid onto the seal design. This ensures that the areas of most interest return correct outcomes. We can use larger mesh sizes in areas with much less relevance (or decrease levels of displacement) to minimise the computing time required to unravel the mannequin.
Material properties are then assigned to the seal and hardware elements. Most sealing materials are non-linear; the amount they deflect under a rise in pressure varies depending on how giant that pressure is. This is unlike the straight-line relationship for most metals and inflexible plastics. This complicates the material model and extends the processing time, but we use in-house tensile check facilities to accurately produce the stress-strain material fashions for our compounds to ensure the analysis is as representative of real-world performance as attainable.
What happens with the FEA data?
The analysis itself can take minutes or hours, depending on the complexity of the part and the vary of operating conditions being modelled. Behind the scenes in the software program, many hundreds of hundreds of differential equations are being solved.
pressure gauge หน้าปัด 4 นิ้ว are analysed by our experienced seal designers to determine areas the place the design may be optimised to match the specific requirements of the application. Examples of these necessities could embody sealing at very low temperatures, a must minimise friction levels with a dynamic seal or the seal may have to resist excessive pressures without extruding; no matter sealing system properties are most important to the shopper and the application.
Results for the finalised proposal could be presented to the shopper as force/temperature/stress/time dashboards, numerical information and animations displaying how a seal performs all through the analysis. This data can be used as validation knowledge within the customer’s system design process.
An example of FEA
Faced with very tight packaging constraints, this buyer requested a diaphragm component for a valve software. By using FEA, we had been in a position to optimise the design; not solely of the elastomer diaphragm itself, but also to propose modifications to the hardware components that interfaced with it to extend the obtainable house for the diaphragm. This kept material stress levels low to remove any risk of fatigue failure of the diaphragm over the lifetime of the valve.
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