Finite Element Analysis of O-ring Sealing Performance of Manned Submersible Viewports

This paper studies the effects of compression rate, sealing gap, working medium pressure, and rubber hardness on the O-ring sealing performance of manned submersible viewports. Large-deformation contact analysis between the viewport and the seat under water depth 100–500 m is performed using implicit finite element analysis (FEA), after introducing the Mooney–Rivlin hyperelastic constitutive model for the nitrile rubber O-ring. The influence laws of various parameters above on the O-ring sealing performance of viewport are obtained by studying the distributions of the von Mises stress and contact stress as well as the contact width. This work provides numerical approach for design and analysis of the O-ring sealing of viewports.