ASME B16.20 Spiral Wound Gaskets Performance Testing

Abstract

Spiral Wound Gaskets have widespread use in the Process Industry, with adequate results in both piping and equipment applications. The current revision of ASME B16.20-2012 provides several details of gasket construction and dimensions. Paragraph 3.2.6 of the referenced standard has been the object of many discussions, and some question its effectiveness since it does not assure a suitable sealing performance. This paper proposes to address this issue showing results of sealability tests with many different sizes of gaskets. It also proposes a test protocol that could eventually rewrite Paragraph 3.2.6 with a protocol for sealability in addition to the compression evaluation.