Software: MSC Marc
Trelleborg Sealing Solutions - Nonlinear FEA - an integrated part of product development
To design the right sealing, FEA has become an integrated part of product development at Trelleborg Sealing Solution in Helsingør (the city of Hamlet).
Trelleborg Sealing Solution designs and manufactures O-Rings activated sealing systems of Poly Tetra Fluoro Ethylene (PTFE) Teflon®. The seals are used in a wide range of products and have an influence on how tight the system is. And how effectively the parts of the product can be moved among themselves.
To design the perfect seal, the use of nonlinear simulation software Marc from MSC Software has become an integral part of product development.
In combination with Trelleborg's long experience, the results of FEA analyzes are used to assess a number of aspects about the product:
- How the product behaves at different pressures
- How different materials behave
- How great is the contact pressure on the sealing surface
- How great is the friction of movement
- Where does material flow during assembly and pressure
In order to analyze the above aspects, Trelleborg needs to model their materials with a non-linear material model, where the materials department has supplied tension and strain curves for the materials at different temperatures.
Søren Larsen, Design Engineer, Trelleborg Sealing Solution, Helsingør
“What really moved in the development of FEA models were the customized courses. Futhermore we got assistance in building good models that could be verified against test results and our own experiences.
The excellent cooperation with the competent people at the MSC Software reseller has really given us a boost."
Future plans
In the long term, Trelleborg wants to extend the material model with time-dependent properties, but since step-by-step verification is required, it takes time to develop this simulations.
Contact and large deformations are also needed to describe the system in which the sealing is activated by the pressure from the o-ring. Especially the o-ring can undergo large deformations during installation and pressure setting.
To handle this, automatic remeshing is used on an ongoing basis. The settings for the contact algorithm have been developed over time so that the simulations are now robust and can handle many different seals.
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