Numerical Evaluation of the Long-term Sealing Performance of the Silver Gasket for Dual Purpose Metal Cask under High Temperature

It is important to evaluate the effect of thermal ageing on the sealing performance of metal gaskets under high temperature for long-term usage. Therefore, in order to gain representative data for this kind of metal-sealed lid system, BAM is currently performing laboratory tests of different gasket types with aluminum and silver jackets at three different temperatures under static conditions up to four years so far, using test flanges for gaskets with full scale cross section diameter but much smaller outer diameter. On the other hand, in order to investigate the applicability of the numerical methodology to evaluate the long-term behavior of the metal gaskets, such as a correlation between seal pressure force and holding time, CRIEPI is developing a modeling method including material tests (tensile and creep tests) at high temperature. In this paper, the applicability of the finite element method (ABAQUS) to predict the recovery displacement and residual seal pressure force of the gasket complex was verified by comparing the calculated values with BAM’s laboratory test results under the joint research agreement between BAM and CRIEPI.