July 2018

Silicone Gasket Material – The Ends and Outs

What a difference an “e” makes! Silicon is the material of electronics. It’s hard and brittle and makes lousy gaskets. Silicone on the other hand is soft and elastic, which makes it a good choice in many gasket applications. Here’s what makes this polysiloxane material so useful.

Basic Chemistry

Silicon and silicone are closely related. Silicon is a naturally-occurring element while silicone is a polymer that combines silicon atoms with those of oxygen and the H3C hydrocarbon compound. The result is a soft, plastic-like material that springs back after being compressed.

More Silicone Properties

In addition to compressibility, other useful features of silicone include:

  • Poor adhesion, so it doesn’t mark surfaces
  • Low toxicity, making it useful for food and medical applications
  • Resists degradation by ultraviolet light (sunlight)
  • Low electrical conductivity
  • Repels water
  • Ozone resistant
  • Retains its flexibility over a temperature range of -94 to +392°F

These properties make silicone gaskets a good choice in a range of food, medical and electrical applications. It won’t taint foods and it handles a wider temperature range than many other gasket materials.

Silicone Weaknesses

In some regards, silicone performs less well as a gasket material than the alternatives. Some others have higher strength and better compression set recovery for instance. It’s also attacked by hydrocarbons like most oils and fuels, and resistance to acids and alkalines is poor. In short, unless you need the special properties of silicone there may be better alternatives.

Silicone Forms

Silicone is available in both solid sheet and as a foamed or cellular material. Silicone foam may be either closed or open cell.

Silicone comes in many colors, (which may not be food grade, so check before ordering.) There are also many variants tailored for specific application needs. Some will go to lower temperatures than that given above, while others have been engineered for higher strength or even electrical conductivity.

If you’re considering using silicone gaskets we respectfully suggest speaking with one of our material specialists. There are many instances where silicone is an excellent choice, but sometimes other materials may perform better.

Don’t Overspecify Your Gasket Requirements

When choosing a gasket always consider the application’s TEMP – that’s the temperature, environment, media and pressure. This will lead you to the best material for the job, providing you can predict what those values will be. In reality, all but the media can vary. In response, engineers sometimes select gasket material to handle the worst possible combination of conditions. This is not a good idea, and here’s why.

Compromising Performance, at a Price

Consider an application where a simple nitrile rubber gasket will handle the normal operating conditions. Then throw in the remote possibility of exceptionally low ambient temperatures or hotter-than-normal media. This could lead you to look at silicone or PTFE gasket materials.

These will handle extremes better than nitrile rubber, but both are considerably more expensive. And there’s another point to consider: will they work as well as the nitrile over the normal working range? If nitrile best satisfies the typical needs of the application, that’s probably the material to go with.

Consider Risks and Probabilities

There are of course exceptions. If the likelihood of failure is related to the chance of extreme deviations from normal conditions, how much deviation do you design for? Four-sigma? Six? More? It depends on how much risk you’re willing to accept, and that is driven by the cost of failure.

If you’re sealing steam in an accessible location the consequences of a gasket failure are probably not too severe. But if the application is sealing-in sulfuric acid in a high volume processing plant, the costs of both downtime and failure could be very high.

Make an Engineering Decision

Here’s the bottom line: gasket failure always has a cost. You can probably reduce the risk of failure and extend the period between gasket replacement by specifying more sophisticated gasket material – Viton/FKM rather than neoprene for example. But, this increases the upfront costs. So estimate risks and costs – a Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) might help – and make an informed decision about the right gasket material for your application.