Viscoelastic 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 retightening torque. The effect of gasket material, time duration at each stress level, as well as the geometric parameters of the gasket are investigated. An experimental procedure and test setup are used to validate the proposed gasket model.