In order to meet the increasing demands on the quality and quantity of products, leak tests are being used more and more frequently. These are used in a wide variety of areas. Products are tested against the ingress or leakage of liquids or pressure. In this case, an effective test provides safety.
The increasing quality requirements for products and the safety in their production are becoming increasingly important. For this reason, many products are tested against the ingress or leakage of liquid or gaseous media. A leak test can be carried out in various ways. The volume to be tested (e.g. a gearbox housing) is closed by manually or automatically closing all openings with sealing adapters.
If the closed volume is then subjected to a specific pressure, a leak can be detected after a calming phase by monitoring the pressure (absolute pressure measurement) or by monitoring the volume flow to a connected test volume (differential pressure measurement). A leak can be located, for example, by immersion testing or by spraying on a soap solution. Visible bubbles form at the location of the leak.
Leak testing with ambient air can be used for a wide range of products. In some cases, a special test gas is used for the leak test instead of ambient air. The most common test gases are helium or so-called forming gas. Since helium atoms are simply smaller than air molecules, a helium leak test is used, for example, when particularly small leaks are already considered critical. This is the case with systems that carry flammable media, such as fuel or flammable refrigerants. After the volume to be tested has been sealed, it is flooded with the test gas and subjected to a specific pressure.
A particularly sensitive leak detector, a so-called sniffer, is used to detect the leak. One difficulty with leak testing with test gas is that the test result is positive if "nothing was measured". If no test gas is detected, this can be interpreted as meaning that the system is leak-tight. In order to rule out the possibility that "nothing was measured" because the sniffer is defective, the correct functioning of the leak detector must be demonstrated during each test using a so-called calibration leak.
Avoidance of costly rework on the line.
Various test options depending on the required test accuracy
Higher investment costs at the start of production
Planning-intensive component definition
Various test options depending on the required test accuracy
The system and the test system should be coordinated from the start to ensure the best possible results.
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