Abstract :
A conventional disk (¯at ring) gasket for ConFlat1 sealing system has been commonly applied to commercially available
equipments for ultrahigh vacuum systems. However, its large redundant part which wastes the tightening force makes its
handling and seal reliability problematic. We examine a taper-seal type gasket, which is newly designed to improve the
inef®ciency of ConFlat mechanism using conventional disk gaskets. It is remarked that the obtained seal area on a taper-seal
type gasket is 1:6 3:7 times larger than that of a conventional disk gasket. Our numencal results on stress distributions in a
tightened gasket indicate that taper-seal gasket realizes highly stable seal pressure even under a lower tightening torque. High
sealing reliability is thus achieved as expected which is mainly due to the wide seal area and stable seal pressure realized even
for rather hard gasket material. Taper-seal type gasket also has some practical advantages. The most important of them may be
that it enables to construct new edgeless metal sealing systems without a welded heavy ¯ange. Here, edgeless sealing systems
are composed of highly ¯exible incorporating viewports, bellows, feedthroughs, and blank-off covers, as well as any other
conventional vacuum components. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
