Fabrication of a Rubber Gasket Using Reverse Engineering Technique

In this study، a rubber gasket with the dimensions of 1500 mm × 500 mm was fabricated using a reverse engineering method and utilizing a special rubber gasket as a reference. In order to identify the components in the reference gasket، some analyzing techniques such as pyrolysis، solvent extraction، and thermogravimetry as well as several analytical instruments including FTIR، EDAX، and XRD were used. In addition، some thermal characterizing instruments such as DSC and TGA were utilized to characterize the reference gasket and those fabricated herein. After assuring that the properties of the reference gasket were almost the same as rubber plates produced in laboratory، a number of rubber gaskets were produced using an industrial mold. To evaluate the quality of the fabricated gaskets and compare their properties with the reference gasket، some of the fabricated gaskets together with the reference gasket were placed inside an industrial amine heat exchanger for 35 days. The gaskets were then removed from the heat exchanger and tested for tensile strength، elongation at break، and hardness. This investigation showed that the rubber gaskets made according to the two rubber formulations in this work possessed almost the same properties as the reference gasket.