Permeability test and fuzzy orthogonal analysis of hydrogenated nitrile O-ring

Abstract

In the high temperature, high pressure and high corrosive environment of the oil and gas drilling downhole, the weatherability of rubber sealing material has a great influence on the production safety. In order to study the important degree of every key environmental factor in downhole influencing the sealing performance of rubber sealing material, a new device of simulating downhole environment is designed to test the permeability of O-ring. The sample is hydrogenated nitrile O-ring and orthogonal experiment method is used to do nine tests by getting three levels from temperature, pressure and CO₂ volume fraction. Test adopts fuzzy orthogonal method to analyze the main effects and the interaction between two factors, taking tensile strength, diameter variety rate and pH value of indicator as evaluation index. The results show that: the environmental factor influencing the sealing performance of hydrogenated nitrile O-ring from high to low by turns is temperature, pressure and CO₂ volume fraction, while the interaction between temperature and pressure is the most significant. It provides a new way to study the influence of downhole complex environment on the performance of rubber sealing material. Moreover, the results have important reference value to further study the failure mechanism of rubber sealing ring in many environmental factors and the rational use in engineering.

Keywords

Hydrogenated nitrile / O-ring / Permeability / Fuzzy orthogonal / Oil and gas exploration

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