• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.86-93
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• 2009

Elastomeric O-rings have been the most common seals due to their excellent sealing capacity, and availability in costs and sizes. One of the critical applications of O-ring seals is solid rocket motor joint seal where the operating hot gas must be sealed during the combustion. This has long been a design issue to avoid the system failure. For laterally constrained, squeezed and pressurized condition, deformed shape of O-ring was measured by computed tomography method and CCD laser sensor, compared with numerical calculations. As clearance gap changes, sealing performance had been evaluated on peak contact stresses at top, bottom and side contact surfaces. As clearance gap increases, peak contact stresses and contact widths in top and side contact surfaces increase, and the asymmetry of stress distributions is promoted due to pressure increase. It is suggested that peak stress of bottom contact surface can be approximated by simple superposition of peak ones due to squeeze and pressure. Under pressurized condition, sealing performance is dependent on not peak stresses of bottom and side contact surfaces but that of top.