Gasket Joint Sealing Considerations on Small Engines 891789

The emergence of numerous new products plus higher product and quality standards on existing products, has focused increased attention on effective gasketed joint sealing. Asbestos free materials added additional difficulties in achieving functional and cost effect solutions. Careful attention in product design and product manufacturing concerning gasket requirements, can reduce overall product testing and evaluation times and costs. Static testing on product hardware can be used to evaluate the distribution of sealing loads at installation, and over time. Dynamic testing is required for final verification of gasket joints. These can include a variety of tests ranging fro m customer endurance and durability tests to special tests more unique to the gasket industry for accelerating gasket testing and evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information with regard to selecting and evaluating gaskets for small engines. Over the past few years there has been a proliferation of new engines and related hardware, plus fairly rapid changes in redesigning and upgrading existing products. The design and development time schedules have been accelerated to bring these products to market faster. At the same time the standards impacting product quality and reliability, and gasket leakage in particular, have become more stringent. Also, the industry is switching from asbestos based gaskets to non-asbestos based gaskets. Lastly, there exists a cost containment environment from the small engine manufacturers that places additional pressure on finding and efficiently evaluating cost effective sealing solutions.