During the winter months everyone is jacketed with coats of various sizes and colors, all of which are meant for protection against the elements, even though most people usually choose their jackets based on style. Gaskets, which are seals that are most often placed between pipes and tubes in various industrial settings, sometimes need the additional protection of a jacket too. However, aesthetics don’t matter when choosing a jacketed gasket for an industrial application. Instead there are other criteria, such as materials, size and design that dictate what type of jacketed gasket a company will choose.

Rather then simply covering a normal gasket material with a jacket, jacketed gaskets utilize two different types of material; a softer “filler” material for the base of the gasket and then a harder, protection-oriented material for the jacket. This allows gaskets to be excellent seals as well as protect them from the chemical or environmental corrosion that would cause them to need replacing. The filler part of the gasket is made from a plethora of materials, like Teflon, graphite and ceramics. The jacket portion of jacketed gaskets is usually made from materials like stainless steel, copper, brass or soft iron.

Sizes completely and totally depend on the application. For example, a heat exchanger being used in a water treatment facility will be very large and therefore require giant jacketed gaskets to serve as seals. On the other hand, the pipes that deliver water to our sinks at home are much smaller and therefore require significantly smaller gaskets. The style of jacketed gaskets also varies depending on how intense the environment will be for the gasket. For example, a high pressure application that is also dealing with extreme temperatures and chemicals would require a gasket that is double jacketed so that the entire gasket face is protected.