Development status and trend of rubber and plastic sealing technology

Sealing is the key core basic technology to ensure the safety, reliability and longevity of mechanical equipment. The sealing industry is not large, but as the core parts of machines, pumps, pipes, valves, etc., it almost covers automotive, aerospace, navigation, petroleum, chemical, energy, metallurgy and other industrial fields, playing an important role in the entire industrial development process. Among them, rubber and plastic seal is a general term for rubber and plastic seals, because of its simple structure, compact size, resilience, self-lubrication, chemical corrosion resistance and other advantages, is the largest type of sealing elements in mechanical equipment.

In recent years, rubber and plastic sealing from the theoretical mechanism research, material preparation technology, forward design technology to product production technology and other aspects have made major breakthroughs, China's rubber and plastic sealing industry has also made great progress. Among them, the low-speed and low-pressure rubber seal market has been relatively mature, and can basically meet domestic demand; The situation that the key seals of high-end equipment such as aviation, aerospace and navigation heavy industries rely heavily on imports has also been improved. In general, the technical level of the domestic rubber sealing industry has reached a new level. However, with the development of new industrial technology, machinery and equipment increasingly high-quality, high performance, rubber and plastic sealing conditions are also increasingly harsh, coupled with global environmental awareness, sealing parts gas, liquid and other emission standards are increasing and other factors, rubber and plastic sealing technology is also facing many new challenges.

New challenges give rise to new demand, rubber and plastic sealing industry is accelerating innovation and change, more and more enterprises to join the ranks of adjusting the industrial structure, increase research and development, production and testing experimental equipment investment, related sealing materials and structures continue to appear new breakthroughs and progress. It can be expected that with the acceleration of innovation and change of rubber and plastic sealing technology, the entire industry's personnel quality, technical equipment, raw and auxiliary materials, processing technology, production environment and management level will be further improved, the relevant standard system will be increasingly improved, and the original technology will be more and more. The domestic rubber and plastic sealing industry original industry overall small scale, fewer varieties and product lines, unstable quality, low standard level, weak technical strength and other problems will gradually be improved and solved. In short, the rubber and plastic sealing industry structure change is taking place, the industrial pattern is accelerating change, need to cause the domestic rubber and plastic sealing practitioners attach great importance.

First, the development status and trend of rubber sealing technology

In many rubber and plastic engineering materials, polyurethane, nitrile rubber, EPidiene diene rubber, fluorine rubber, silicone, polyformaldehyde, polyamide, polytetrafluoroethylene, polyether ether ketone and other have their own excellent characteristics, in the sealing industry, It can be used as dust ring, piston seal, piston rod seal, symmetrical seal, support ring/guide ring, rotary seal, mine seal and other special seals.

Rubber seal seems simple, but it is still a system engineering, good sealing design covers material development, structural design, manufacturing process and inspection and testing, sealing performance is determined by the entire system composed of these four parts, any link problems, will lead to seal failure, so the next will be a detailed review of the status quo and trends of the four aspects.

1. Design and simulation of rubber and plastic seal structure

1.1 Design innovation

Due to the small scale of the domestic rubber and plastic sealing industry as a whole, the technical strength is weak, most of the sealing manufacturers use reverse design methods to test the imitation and manufacture foreign mature sealing products, to meet customer needs. In recent years, with the implementation of industrial engineering policies, as well as high-end equipment for domestic seals supporting the increasing demand, China's sealing industry has been rapid development, reverse design has been unable to meet the requirements of high-performance, high-quality sealing development, forward design has gradually become the main design means to meet the needs of host equipment. The sealing and lubrication research team of the Department of Mechanics of Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hefei University of Technology, Zhejiang University, etc., have carried out relevant research on a variety of rubber seal forward design methods, and achieved good application results.

With the development of new technologies, the industrial field has gradually begun to introduce intelligent design methods: it refers to the use of computers to simulate the thinking activities of designers, and simulate or reproduce the creative design process of designers on the computer. For the sealing industry, intelligent design is the result of further development of forward design. At present, computer-aided design has been widely used, but it mainly stays on the simulation of the design results, and can not replace the creativity of designers, and there is still a long distance from the real intelligent design. However, as the future development trend, intelligent design is still a hot spot of research.