Development of Seal for Power Steering

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.