How to choose a seal

This is one of the SEED curriculum engineering design guides. SEED (Sharing Experience in Engineering Design) is an organisation of teachers of design in tertiary education.

You can use this guide to determine what kind of a seal will meet your needs and then to select a seal from those offered by manufacturers. If you are not very familiar with the standard types of seal available from stock then review the section on standard seal types available from manufacturers. Reference should be made at every stage of the selection process to the Product Design Specification (PDS) for the system (all the relevant factors should be described in a well written PDS). The characteristics of seals available “off the shelf” often constrain the design of the system components that require the seal so be prepared to change their design to match a manufacturer’s seal.

The guides looks at how to: specify the environment and operating conditions, specify the performance of the seal, select the type of seal required, select the material for the seal, choose a seal from a manufacturer’s catalogue, review your choice of seal. There is also a list of seal manufacturers.

[Description and screenshot taken from the SEED Curriculum for Engineering Design page for this guide. (c) The Design Society used under the terms of their (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.]

Link: http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/dpg/sel/selhome.htm
Author: P. H. Hamilton; David Mole
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Rights: Copyright 2011 The Design Society - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/about.html