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Fundamentals of Leak Testing: Test Category

This document discusses fundamentals of leak testing. It is divided into three categories: measurement, location, and monitoring. Measurement determines total leakage, location pinpoints individual leaks, and monitoring ensures long-term containment. A recommended procedure is to first measure total leakage, then use location to find and fix leaks, and finally remeasure total leakage. A leak path is a hole capable of passing gas with a pressure differential. Leakage is described as a mass flow rate. Pressure units and their relationships to leakage rates are also discussed. Dynamic testing uses continuous pumping while static accumulates helium for sensitivity. Common methods like hood, bell jar, and tracer probe are illustrated.

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58 views3 pages

Fundamentals of Leak Testing: Test Category

This document discusses fundamentals of leak testing. It is divided into three categories: measurement, location, and monitoring. Measurement determines total leakage, location pinpoints individual leaks, and monitoring ensures long-term containment. A recommended procedure is to first measure total leakage, then use location to find and fix leaks, and finally remeasure total leakage. A leak path is a hole capable of passing gas with a pressure differential. Leakage is described as a mass flow rate. Pressure units and their relationships to leakage rates are also discussed. Dynamic testing uses continuous pumping while static accumulates helium for sensitivity. Common methods like hood, bell jar, and tracer probe are illustrated.

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Chapter 2

Fundamentals of Leak Testing


Test Category
Leak testing is divided into three categories: measurement, location
monitoring. Leakage measurement is the measurement of the total leakage of a
system. It is the only category that can truly determine that all possible leak paths
have been detected.
Leak location is a procedure for pinpointing the exact location of individual
leaks. Until located, a leak is not known to exist It is not a reliable technique for
determining total leakage because each individual leak may not be found. However,
it is a very useful technique for locating, and then repairing, leaks to reduce or
eliminate leakage in a system.
Leakage monitoring is a long term, continuous test ensuring that containment
of a vessel has not been breached. A recommended procedure for leak testing a
system is to first measure the total leakage to see if the system is acceptable as is. If
not, leak locating is used to locate and fix the leak sites. Then, another total leakage
measurement is made again to see if the leakage has been reduced to an acceptable
value.

Leak Path
A leak path is a hole or porosity m the wall of a chamber capable of passing gas
from one side of the , wall to the other when there is a pressure differential or a
concentration differential across the wall. A leak path is not described in terms of its
physical dimensions, such as length and diameter, because these cannot usually be
well defined. Thus, in leak testing, the amount of gas that will pass per unit of time
through the leak path under a specified pressure differential is used to describe or
measure the leak path. Leakage is usually expressed as mass flow rate,such as pascal
cubic meters per second (pa.m3/s).The leak paths are usually treated as though they
were of an ideal shape, such as a smooth bore capillary, and they would leak the
same amount in either direction under similar pressure differentials.
However, there are exceptions, such as when the test gas pressure changes the
shape of the leak path, or where there is a loose particle in the path that changes
position and thus changes the amount of gas that will leak under a fixed pressure
differential, Fortunately, these exceptions are relatively rare. The dimensions of
small leaks, those in the 10-7pa.m3/s and smaller ranges, are very small and can be
easily plugged by dirt or moisture. For this reason, cleanliness is very important.
Pressure Units and Leakage Rates
Pressure is an important consideration because it is used to define the quality of a
vacuum; the driving force across a boundary. It is part of the
leakage rate term and is used in many basic calculations. The Testing
standard unit for pressure is the pascal. The pascal is equal one newton per square
meter. There are many other units for measuring pressure, as shown in Table 2.
Pressure is frequently measured relative to atmospheric pressure and must be
converted to an absolute value for use in calculations. This can be accomplished with
the following equation when measuring pressure at sea level：

1) Pa=Pg+101000
where Pa is absolute pressure (pascal) and is gage pressure (pascal), .

Leak rate is measured as a mass flow rate per unit of time and is usually expressed
as Pa.m3/s. Another common unit of leak rate measure is std.cm3/s .The relationship
between these two leakage rates is shown in Eq. 2.

2) Pa.m3/s=10std.cm3/s
In some applications, other units of leak rate measurement are used. The
relationship of these units is shown in Table 3.

Dynamic and static test


Helium leak testing is usually performed with the high vacuum pump of a helium
mass spectrometer continually pumping on the test object This is called dynamic
testing. Another procedure where the vacuum pump is disconnected from the test
object is called the static method. This method accumulates helium leakage to make a
more sensitive measurement and is relatively uncommon; however, one example is
illustrated below. Common methods are called the hood, bell jar, tracer probe,
detector probe and bombing methods, as illustrated in the following figures.

The hood method, shown in figure 1, provides a quantitative measure of the total
leakage of a system. Comparison of system leakage to the response from a helium
standard leak provides this quantitative measurement A hood to contain the helium
tracer gas may be formed from a plastic sheet with up to50% greater volume than that
of the test object The standard leak is usually located at a point most remote from the
mass spectrometer.

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