Trelleborg claims vane-sealing breakthrough

ERJ staff report (DS)

Fort Wayne, Indiana -- Trelleborg Sealing Solutions claims to have made improvements in the design of vane seals, that have helped make viable the use of rotary vane actuators across a wide range of engineering applications. These include contemporary engineering designs such as the control of aircraft wing flaps, anti-roll suspension systems on high-performance premium cars and machine tools, such as multi-directional tube bending equipment.

Trelleborg said the key to this is an innovative method for stamping shapes made from sintered plates of its proprietary Turcon seal material. This process replaces high-cost milling, previously required to achieve the rectangular seals with razor-sharp edges, essential to achieving sealing integrity within rotary actuator applications. These latest manufacturing advances are providing distinct cost and performance benefits to customers and extending the potential applications for rotary vane actuators in many areas of industry.

"Effective sealing of rotary vane actuators is a challenge, as the shape to be sealed is rectangular, and the four corners of the rectangular seals must be razor-sharp. In the event of there not being a perfectly sealed surface, sealing integrity may be compromised as liquid could leak from one working space to another," said Antonio Garcia, Aerospace Segment Manager for Trelleborg Sealing Solutions Americas. "It was thought the only effective method of producing these sharp edged rectangular seals was through a high-cost milling process. We proposed an alternative concept, to stamp sintered plates in Turcon PTFE-based material, to the shape of the seal."

Following attempts to achieve this by one of Europe's leading stamping companies, Trelleborg turned to its own production facility in Denmark, where vane seals with razor sharp edges were successfully produced using Turcon. By utilizing this high performance material, sealing integrity was ensured at both room temperature and extremes, ranging from -40°F/ -40°C to well above +212°F/ +100°C and at pressure exceeding 2,176psi / 150 bar.

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Press release from Trelleborg