dynamic seals

Article re-posted with permission from Parker Hannifin Sealing & Shielding Team.

Original content can be found on Parker’s website and was written by Dorothy Kern, applications engineering lead, Parker O-Ring & Engineered Seals Division.

There are 400+ standard O-ring sizes, so which is the right one for an application? Or maybe you are wondering if one O-ring thickness is better than another. This short article will walk through some of the design considerations for selecting a standard, commercially available O-ring for an application.

Design Considerations

Hardware geometry and limitations are the first consideration. A traditional O-ring groove shape is rectangular and wider than deep. This allows space for the seal to be compressed, about 25% (for static sealing), and still have some excess room for the seal to expand slightly from thermal expansion or swell from the fluid.  Reference Figure 1 as an example. Once the available real estate on the hardware is established, then we look at options for the O-ring inner diameter and cross-section.

AS568 Sizes

From a sourcing perspective, selecting a commercially available O-ring size is the easiest option.  AS568 sizes are the most common options available both through Parker and from catalog websites.  A list of those sizes is found in a couple of Parker resources including the O-Ring Handbook and the O-Ring Material Offering Guide. They are also listed here.  The sizes are sorted into five groups of differing cross-sectional thicknesses, as thin as 0.070” and as thick as 0.275”, shown in Table 1 below.