Gaskets are mechanical seals that fill the space between two
or more mating surfaces, to prevent leakage. The most popular materials used to
make gaskets include paper, rubber, silicone, metal, felt, cork, and plastic.
Gaskets are required to withstand high compressive loads, especially in
industrial applications. This is why rubber is the most preferred material of
all. You can get the best kinds of rubber gaskets and seals from Trim
Engineering Services, one of the most renowned spiral wound gasket manufacturers in India. For gaining better
knowledge about rubber gaskets, you need to read the blog further.
Rubber is available in two forms – natural and man-made
(synthetic). Both natural and synthetic rubbers can be used for gasketing
solutions, but which one you should prefer is the question. Let us see how both
these kinds of rubbers differ from each other, and which one is better.
Natural rubber
Natural rubber is retrieved from the natural rubber plant,
Hevea Brasiliensis, which dispenses a tacky latex sap that needs to be
collected and refined to form usable rubber. This is because this material
comes with a lot of impurities and requires further processing to be used in
any kind of application. This natural material is highly environment-friendly
and has higher tensile strength and elasticity, as compared to synthetic
rubber.
Synthetic rubber
Synthetic rubber is created from crude oil of dirty
hydrocarbons. This man-made rubber is manufactured by targeting petroleum
by-products, and is a comparatively easier material to create due to the
synthetic workflow. This material is customized at a molecular level, resulting
in superior abrasion resistance. However, as compared to natural rubber, this
material is not environment-friendly, meaning that it is not resistant to heat,
oil, and other industrial hazards. But, there are more than 20 different
synthetic rubber sub-classes like silicone rubber, neoprene, nitrile, and EPDM;
each of which can be further tailored to resist chemicals, oils, corrosion, and
high temperatures.
So now, we can see that while natural rubber is tough and
elastic, synthetic rubber is a chemically controllable winner. Because of these
properties, there are instances when both these rubbers are used together. For
example, in automobile tyres, natural rubber is adhered to a metal mesh, which
is then covered with a layer of synthetic rubber as a shock absorber. On the
other hand, applications like aircrafts and tractors opt for only natural
rubber for their tyres as they need to support heavier loads, and there is
nothing better than tough natural rubber. But, what about when it needs to be
used in gaskets? Definitely, the mechanically stronger natural rubber should be
the ideal choice for gasket seals to ensure persistence and better tolerance
when strong clamping and bolt forces are applied. In spite of this, synthetic
rubber seems to be a better and more popular option because of the applications
of high temperatures and presence of strong corrosive chemicals that gaskets
are used in. This is because synthetic rubbers can resist all chemically and
thermally active effects.
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