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ADC12 is one of the common aluminum alloys for automobiles because it has suitable for casting and machining. However, the corrosion resistance of ADC12 is insufficient in comparison with other aluminum alloys. The corrosion depends on chemical composition of aluminum and circumstance around aluminum. It was considered that a crevice such as a seal gap accelerates corrosion rate. Therefore, the corrosion at a sealing gap between ADC12 and rubber gasket was investigated. Salt water corrosion tests were carried out with an o-ring compressed between ADC12 plate and plastic plate. Corrosion depth and corrosion area at sealing surface were measured with a microscope. The corrosion depth at the sealing surface was deeper than that outside it. Since smooth surface of aluminum prevented the sealing surface from corrosion, it was considered that the narrow sealing gap enabled to decrease in the corrosion rate.

A seal ring of PEEK material was developed and shown to withstand high pressure and high shaft velocity. This was made possible by cooling the ring material using leakage through an engineered passage at the cut junction. The cooling effect of leakage rate was modeled thermodynamically, and calculated leakage rates were compared to measured results.

NBR (acrylonitrile butadiene rubber) has been used for the oil seal equipped on a power steering. However, lack of heat resistance was occasionally observed for NBR, with the recent trend of customer's demand for increasing the life of oil seals in high temperature environmental condition. We developed an oil seal with H-NBR material, which could exhibit the superior performance in the heat resistance; however, it had a weak point in low temperature environment. We have developed HNBR1, the new H-NBR, which has been improved in the performance for low temperature [1]. HNBR1 has been applied for power steering seals as the rubber material, which has superior heat resistance, cold resistance and oil resistance.

In order to clarify the sealing mechanism of radial lip seals, a new test apparatus with a hollow glass shaft was developed, and the fluid behavior under sealing condition was observed by using the Laser Induced Fluorescent (LIF) method. In this paper, the description of the test apparatus and first measurement results are shown. A laser dye dissolved in synthetic oil below the seal lip was excited at a wavelength of 427nm by a SHG solid state blue light laser. The fluorescence was detected by a CCD camera through an optical filter. The fluid paths of the oil beneath the seal lip appeared ahead of each rib as soon as a shaft started to rotate. Furthermore, the intensity of the fluorescence, which is related to the fluid film thickness, increased with shaft speed increasing. First measurement results obtained with the LIF method were in good agreement with other measurement results.

The recent tendency for higher output and high-rotation-speed auto-engines brings an increasing possibility of firing pressure and heat distortion. On the other hand, demands for reducing the consumption of fuel change the material of auto-engine from cast iron to aluminum die-cast. Therefore, the number of cases of engine structure deformation and bore distortion are increasing. As this reason, the new robust type of cylinder head gasket is required for this aluminum block gasoline engine. However, conventional gaskets such as metal reinforced flexible graphite and metal clad non-asbestos millboard have difficulty in maintaining the sealing performance and in reducing the bore distortion. The rubber pre-coated metal gasket can obtain sufficient clamp load on the head gasket and maintain good sealing performance. The rubber-coated metal gaskets include the FKM coated metal gasket, which is called an after-coat type.

Many control valves utilizing the vacuum pressur of engines are used to control the engine, fuel supply, and driving speed. The authors established an empirical formula regarding sealing performance of control valves made of rubber. This formula clarifies the relationship amoung the rubber valve design factors, the counter surface conditions, and the vacuum conditions, with the sealing performance. By applying this formula, it became possible to predict the sealing performance of control valves at a design stage to satisfy the customer's specification.

The oil strainer is used in an automatic transmission in an effort to trap contaminated particles in the transmission oil and protect the valves and other parts from wearing prematurely. Recently in order to increase the reliability of the transmission, non-woven fabric has been used for the filtering material as it has good contamination trapping ability. On the other hand, oil-passing characteristics decrease by using non-woven fabrics as a filtering material. We analyzed the oil flow in an oil strainer by performing a computer simuration and at the same time obtained good results which were confirmed by visualization.

In the seal ring used for the rotating portion of the automatic transmission, we have developed a seal ring in which the wear of the ring is reduced to 1/10 under PV-value of 12MPa · m/s and equivalent at PV-value of 30MPa·m/s and also the frictional torque of the rotating portion is reduced to 1/2 when compared with the conventional PTFE seal ring. This has been achieved by means of improvement of the oil pocket's shape, size, and the distance between oil pockets equally spaced on the side surface of the seal ring.

In automotive automatic transmissions, seal rings made of cast iron or polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) have conventionally been installed between the rotary shaft and housing to prevent oil leakage. Recent trends have indicated that there is an increase in the number of cars with automatic transmissions (1)*, and leakage past the seal rings has become more critical from a functional view point. In this presentation, the leakage phenomena will be discussed, and seal rings with an improved shape and material will be introduced. The result of this design is a lower rate of leakage.

This paper introduces a new simulation test method by using IR analysis which is capable of evaluating the rate of deterioration of VMQ (Silicone) rubber material applied in engine crankshaft seal applications. IR analysis is used to measure the rate of change of the Si-C/Si-0 ratio which indicates the level of deterioration of VMQ material from the hydrolysis of the siloxane bond. Applying the new analysis method, laboratory test conditions could be improved to more closely simulate field conditions.

Sealing performance of oil seals for reciprocating motion has been previously investigated applying the inverse theory of hydrodynamic lubrication. According to this theory, sealing performance of the oil seal is dominated by factors such as the configuration of the lip (lip angle), viscosity of the fluid to be sealed, the sliding speed and the physical property of the lip material. In this presentation, the authors apply the above mentioned theory to a shock absorber seal under the condition where the pumping stroke and motoring stroke speeds of the rod are different. Consequently, the configuration of the seal lip is improved.

Wear of a seal is greatly dependent on the environmental conditions such as the temperature, the speed, the lubrication condition and the design factors such as the total contact load and the contact width of the seal lip. In this presentation, the authors discuss the phenomenon of abnormal wear of the reciprocating seal for an automatic transmission by investigating from a lubrication theory viewpoint. An improved seal usable in severe conditions was developed as a result of this study and is also explained.

Recently, there has been a strong demand for oil seals which exhibit increased high and low temperature resistance while maintaining good oil resistance. Polyacrylate, a commonly applied material, has good oil resistance but is limited in temperature operating range. Silicone has been applied in applications requiring both high and low temperature resistance but has poor oil resistance. Fluoroelastomer exhibits good oil resistance and high temperature resistance but has poor cold temperature performance. In this presentation, newly developed materials which overcome the fluoroelastomer cold temperature and silicone oil resistance weaknesses yet providing high temperature performance greater than polyacrylate are discussed.

Upgrading of the performance and the durability of bellow boots used to seal constant-velocity joints are essential to seet the demand for higher performance and longer life automobiles. In this discussion about bellows boots for sealing constant-velocity joints, examples and analysis results of bench tests for studying wear and fatigue durability are presented.

For either case for rotary shaft or reciprocating shaft motion, rubber lip type seal leakage problems are often encountered under low temperature conditions. As for causes of leakage under low temperature conditions, there are several factors such as following ability of the sealing lip for runout of a shaft or rod, roughening of the sealing surface of the rubber material at the stage of initial motion and so on. Sealing performance is essentially dependent upon the low temperature property of the rubber materials. In this paper, the leakage phenomena is explained through visco-elastic characteristics of the rubber materials.

Through the market experience and information analysis, the importance of Sealing Reliability Activity, especially at the beginning step of determining temporary design specification of oil seal and at the step of evaluation of prototype seals produced according to the temporary design specifications, is discussed.