Formulation of a Strain Hardening Model for Gasket Creep Relaxation

This paper proposes a novel strain hardening model for investigating gasket creep relaxation under compressive step-loading at room temperature. A closed form solution is developed for predicting the steady-state gasket pressure. Step-loading of the gasket may be directly achieved and controlled, or indirectly estimated through the bolt tightening and re-tightening torque. The effect of gasket material, time duration at each stress level, as well as the geometric parameters of the gasket is investigated. An experimental procedure and test set-up are used to validate the proposed gasket model.