When choosing a seal for use with a hydraulic cylinder, several factors including fluid type, pressures, temperatures and duty cycles must be taken into account.
To help this decision-making process, our top piece in today’s newsletter offers a practical guide examining the elastomer materials commonly used for hydraulic cylinder seals. It reviews the differences between the material types, the hydraulic fluids they best match with as well as operating conditions for which each is best suited.
As author Xing Hong from WRKR Seal explains in the piece, nitrile butadiene rubber, or NBR, is usually the default material for seals used in hydraulic systems because it offers excellent resistance to petroleum-based hydraulic fluids along with good mechanical properties, low compression set, and a favorable cost profile. However, it has no resistance to phosphate-ester fluids, poor resistance to polyol-ester biodegradable fluids, and degrades with prolonged exposure above 120 C.
Understanding the benefits, as well as limitations of a sealing material, and ensuring the right one is selected during the design stage provides better assurance unplanned downtime issues will occur.
What questions or issues do you come across when determining what sealing technology to use in a hydraulic cylinder or other fluid power application? Are there other topics related to seals you’d like to see us cover in the future? Email me at [email protected] to offer your thoughts.
Sara Jensen, Editor, Power & Motion
