The yieldable wire fire ring gasket has been used with good success in the majority of domestic medium and heavy duty diesel engines.
With this type of head gasket design, the wire ring is attached to the gasket body by means of a thin stainless steel element (flange). The applied clamping force can be broken down into three component forces: combustion unit load, body-under-flange stress and gasket body stress.
This paper will cover a design refinement that increases the combustion load and the gasket body stress by eliminating the body-under-flange load. Also discussed is an approach whereby the combustion seal seating load can be tailored for a particular application by providing a wire fire ring with a variable thickness around its circumference.
In addition to better load distribution, these designs can provide cost-effective approaches to improvements in block counterbore loading, tolerance control on gasket operating thickness and bore distortion.