Simulation of Room Temperature Vulcanized Gasket Failure at Engine T-Joints

As the automobile industry is moving toward robust packaging, it becomes essential to understand all the unexplored sealing systems in the IC Engine, to find best vehicle experience for the customer. At the exhaust side of most engines, there will always be a T-Joint location which is an assembly junction of 3 or more components, often having dissimilar thermal properties. This location uses RCM gasket on one side of the junction which is closed with RTV seal next to it as a filler. This complex combination of 3-4 dissimilar components with 2 different seals at the T-Joint poses a challenge for effective sealing, to keep the oil from leaking out of the engine.

In this paper, a methodology is discussed to simulate such T-Joint sealing, under the application of thermal loading. CZM technique is used to model the interaction around the RTV seal to capture the right bond characteristic.