Tribological behaviour of sealing materials

The sealing elements are the most critical part of the mechanical sealing assembly and the main aspects of these are the tribological ones. The structural behaviour of the sealing components plays a crucial role in determining the sealing performance. Wide varieties of materials are used as seal face materials in practice. In this paper we focus on a couple of sealing materials CoCrWMo alloy / four different types of materials (copper-zinc alloy – brass, tin-copper alloy-bronze, graphite bronze and Teflon – PTFE). Dry and lubricant friction and ring on ring configuration are considered using a ring on ring tribometer. The rings from CoCrWMo alloy were additive manufactured using selective laser melting (SLM) process. Tribological tests were run at room temperature on different couples. These materials present different tribological behaviours in terms of sliding wear evaluation.