CAE Correlation of Sealing Pressure of a Press-in-Place Gasket

The Press-in-Place (PIP) gasket is a static face seal with self-retaining feature, which is used for the mating surfaces of engine components to maintain the reliability of the closed system under various operating conditions. Its design allows it to provide enough contact pressure to seal the internal fluid as well as prevent mechanical failures. Insufficient sealing pressure will lead to fluid leakage, consequently resulting in engine failures. A test fixture was designed to simulate the clamp load and internal pressure condition on a gasket bolted joint. A sensor pad in combination with TEKSCAN equipment was used to capture the overall and local pressure distribution of the PIP gasket under various engine loading conditions. Then, the test results were compared with simulated results from computer models. Through the comparisons, it was found that gasket sealing pressure of test data and CAE data shows good correlations in all internal pressure cases when the bolt load was 500 N. Compared to 0.138 MPa and 0.276 MPa, better correlation to CAE results was observed at the 0 MPa internal pressure condition. Moreover, the gasket cross-sectional pressure distribution obtained by experimental tests and CAE models correlated very well with R2 (Coefficient of Determination) ranging from 90% to 99% for all load cases. Both CAE and sensor pad test results shows an increase in sealing pressure when internal side pressure is applied to the gasket seal.