Failure Modes and Influencing Factors of Rubber O-Ring Seals in High-Pressure Hydrogen Environments
Zhenwei Lv, Sohail Yasin, Jianfeng Shi, Sheng Zeng
Abstract
Rubber O-rings play a crucial role in ensuring the safety and reliability of high-pressure hydrogen systems. However, their degradation and failure under hydrogen exposure remain a major barrier to the long-term stability of sealing structures. This review summarizes the failure modes of rubber O-rings in high-pressure hydrogen environments and clarifies the interaction mechanisms among hydrogen permeation, swelling, rapid gas decompression (RGD), and mechanical fatigue. Compared with conventional high-pressure gases, hydrogen significantly accelerates the coupling of mechanical and physicochemical degradation, leading to multi-mechanism failure characterized by blistering, crack propagation, and modulus reduction. This review highlights the limitations of existing research, including insufficient long-term experimental data, simplified single-mechanism models, and the lack of multi-physics coupling analysis. Future research priorities are proposed in four aspects: (1) development of hydrogen blister-resistant elastomers, (2) collaborative optimization of sealing structures and materials, (3) in-depth investigation of tribological behavior under hydrogen cycling, and (4) establishment of predictive life models integrating multi-scale simulations and experimental validation. This work provides a state of the art of hydrogen-induced failure mechanisms and offers theoretical and engineering guidance for designing reliable sealing systems in next-generation hydrogen energy applications.