Experimental Evaluation of Cryogenic Pressure Vessel Flanged Joints with Dissimilar Materials in Launch Vehicles
摘要
In launch vehicle applications, flanged joints are used since it permits disassembly, inspection, and reinsertion of seals or refurbishment/replacement of components. However, unlike welded joints, maintenance of leak tightness of flanged joints, especially in cryogenic applications, has many challenges. Special seals like spring energized metallic seals are used for such critical applications. Experimental studies were conducted to evaluate the performance of spring-energized metallic seals with stainless steel-to-aluminium flange combination and aluminium-to-aluminium flange combinations. It is challenging to evaluate the functionality of the seals analytically due to the dependence of the joint’s effectiveness on parameters which cannot be modeled analytically or mathematically. Therefore, several experiments were conducted to study the influence of various parameters on the joint performance. An effective sealing is influenced by many parameters like surface finish of sealing surface, seal compression, amount of torque, thermal cycling, vibrational loads, etc. which are studied and performance of the joint is evaluated by varying the parameters. This paper presents the tests conducted on the flanged joints and its performance during the tests.