Abstract
A rubber seal for wheel bearing which has been mainly applied to car wheel supporting device is required to have both high sealing performance and drag torque. Because of severe operational conditions like infiltration of mud or splashed water, the importance of rubber seal which is aimed for leakage prevention of grease and effective blocking of foreign substances has been increasing continuously. The sealing performance of this seal depends on several factors such as materials of seal, friction conditions of contact regions and geometry of seals and so on. We have focused on the effects of geometric characteristics such as the angle of main lip, interference between lip edge and inner metallic ring. In this study, the optimization of geometric variables was performed using the finite element analysis. For the sake of finite element analysis, uniaxial tensile tests were conducted and several constants for Mooney-Rivlin's equation were obtained. According to the results of this study, mock-up bearing was made. To verify this study, drag torque and mud spray test were preformed.
