Surface roughness 3D modelling and its association with leak tightness for a metal-to-metal contacting surface

Anwar, Ali A.; Dempster, William and Gorash, Yevgen and Nash, David, eds. (2017) Surface roughness 3D modelling and its association with leak tightness for a metal-to-metal contacting surface. In: ASME 2017 Pressure Vessels and Piping Conference. ASME, USA. ISBN 978-0-7918-5797-7 (https://doi.org/10.1115/PVP2017-65404)

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Abstract

This paper presents an overview of a numerical method developed to allow one-way structure-fluid interaction of a scanned representative surface of a Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) measuring 100 um by 100 um to be incorporated into a coupled finite element and computational fluid dynamics model to investigate gas leak rates through micro-gaps in full size metal-to-metal contacting components. The virtual representative surface is created via a real scan using a 3D micro coordinate and surface roughness measurement system. The scan of the physical surface is converted to a CAD format and a finite element model generated which is deformed for a given loading condition. The micro-gaps of the deformed FEA model are extracted and imported into the CFD solver to find the resulting volumetric/mass flow rate for the same set of pressure conditions. This coupled approach allows the leakage rate to be found based on only the surface roughness of metal-to-metal sealing surfaces. This methodology can now be expanded to understand the behaviour and response of metal-to-metal deformable contacting surface components under pressure. Thereafter, the design objective is to minimise or eliminate component leakage.