Theory of the leak-rate of seals

By B. Persson, C. Yang. 2008

200 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Seals are extremely useful devices to prevent fluid leakage. However, the exact mechanism of roughness induced leakage is not well understood. We present a theory of the leak-rate of seals, which is based on percolation theory and a recently developed contact mechanics theory. We study both static and dynamic seals. We present molecular dynamics results which show that when two elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces are squeezed together, as a function of increasing magnification or decreasing squeezing pressure, a non-contact channel will percolate when the (relative) projected contact area, A/A0, is of the order 0.4, in accordance with percolation theory. We suggest a simple experiment which can be used to test the theory.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0094b88d5664d006605ee5bd1fbabfd6195ad67d

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Mechanics of Materials

Citations in the corpus

Interfacial separation between elastic solids with randomly rough surfaces: Comparison between theory and numerical techniques (2011, methodology): “Recently, an analytical contact mechanics model that does not use the asperity concept and becomes exact in the limit of complete contact has been developed by Persson (2001, 2006, 2007), Yang and Persson (2008), and Persson and Yang (2008).”