COMPARISON OF EXPLOSIVE DECOMPRESSION TEST PROTOCOLS FOR ELASTOMER SEALS IN HIGH PRESSURE GAS SERVICE

摘要

Various oil companies and national standards organizations have developed test protocols aimed at defining elastomeric seal materials that can avoid damage during decompression in high pressure gas duty. This paper reviews four such protocols and discusses their relevance to practical seal selection in this type of aggressive oilfield service. The comparison has shown that each of the standards has strengths and weaknesses, and that in selecting a test standard for a particular application, the end-user must aim to get as close to the final working conditions as possible within the test method. Test environment, housing geometry, seal geometry and cyclic conditions must all be replicated. Finite element analysis potentially provides a tool for reducing the quantity of costly and time-consuming performance testing which currently has to be carried out to prove seal integrity.