How do you impress a customer who has been highly satisfied with Freudenberg Sealing Technologies (FST) products from the Fluid Power Division in Hamburg for years? Kolbenpumpe By improving the products’ performance – in this case, V-packing, rod and piston seals, and guide elements. That was the case for a manufacturer of high-performance pumps for the mining industry. The work specifically involved a hydraulically driven piston pump that conveys extremely thick-flowing, organic and mineral slurry around-the-clock. In some cases, this slurry is transported up to 600 km in pipelines, from the mine to the processing plant. The pump pressure ranges between 10 and 300 bar. For years, the BU4 production area at the Hamburg plant has provided the main seal for these piston pumps. Most of all, the small team from production as well as application, process and chemical engineering wanted to set a new standard for the service life of the seal. So its members went to work proactively. They presented the customer with a completely new seal design and impressed the company’s representatives with graphic presentations and detailed finite element method (FEM) calculations. Physical processes can be simulated with FEM. The payoff: tests and orders for a pilot series. Manufacturing trials are already moving ahead at full speed in production.