The rubber hose industry has witnessed remarkable technological progress, driven by its extensive applications across various industrial manufacturing and circulation sectors. These applications span marine engineering equipment, onshore oil and gas development, construction machinery, the automotive industry, and other conventional industrial manufacturing fields. Each application area demands specific performance characteristics from rubber hoses, which has spurred continuous innovation in the industry.
In the marine engineering equipment sector, rubber hoses are required to possess exceptional qualities. They must withstand high pressure, resist corrosion, endure oil exposure, and tolerate high temperatures. These hoses also need to endure bending and pulling stresses under extreme climatic conditions. Similarly, in onshore oil and gas development, hoses are evolving beyond conventional drilling and vibration hoses, extending into more challenging areas such as secondary oilfield development and shale oil and gas extraction. This expansion has led to higher requirements for pressure resistance, abrasion resistance, and heat resistance. Meanwhile, in the construction machinery and automotive industries, rubber hoses are evolving towards enhanced heat resistance, fuel resistance, high-pressure tolerance, and low permeability. The development focus is on special construction machinery, including tunnel boring machines and dual-wheel trench cutters.
The technological level and characteristics of rubber hoses are primarily reflected in the following aspects:
1. Pressure-bearing Capacity
For ultra-high-pressure flexible pipes, the ability to withstand the high pressure of internal media mainly relies on multiple layers of reinforcing skeletons inside the pipe body. These skeletons typically consist of steel wires or steel ropes. The design of the pressure-bearing layer of the pipe body must also be tailored to the hose’s maximum working pressure. Conventionally, a balanced angle (54°44′) or a small variable angle is commonly used for multi-layer cross-winding. As the pressure increases, the diameter of the pressure-bearing skeleton of the hose needs to be increased, or the number of winding layers needs to be added to enhance strength and pressure-bearing capacity. However, increasing the diameter or the number of layers does not proportionally increase the pressure-bearing capacity. This is mainly because the pressure distributed to each steel wire (rope) inside the hose is uneven. Under high pressure, the inner layer of the skeleton layer is utilized more efficiently, while the outer layer is less so, preventing the full potential of all steel wires (ropes) from being realized and reducing the hose’s flexibility.
Advanced pressure-bearing structure design technology, adopting the theory of large variable angle and matching angle design, enables different laying angle designs and functional load distribution for each layer of steel ropes. This ensures that each layer of steel ropes bears stress evenly when the hose withstands internal pressure loads, distributing the pressure from the internal medium fluid uniformly. The overall structure of the hose remains in balance, allowing each layer of steel ropes to perform optimally. This technology can achieve a working pressure of up to 20,000 PSI and a burst pressure exceeding 45,000 PSI. It resolves the issue of uneven fluid high-pressure bearing within the inner skeleton layer of ultra-high-pressure flexible pipes, extends the pipe body’s service life, and endows the hose with excellent flexibility, manifested as lower bending stiffness, better pulse performance, and a lighter pipe body structure. Compared with traditional ultra-high-pressure flexible pipes, it is more user-friendly for installation and applicable to a wider range of scenarios.
2. Sealing Performance
Currently, in the domestic industry, large-diameter, high-pressure hoses commonly use crimped split joints, which can meet the connection requirements of hoses with a crimping working pressure within 10,000 PSI. However, when the pressure exceeds 10,000 PSI, the pressure-bearing layer of the pipe body becomes thicker and has more layers. Due to the limited bite force and compression force of metal, the structural technology of metal pipe head crimping can no longer meet the connection strength, tensile strength, pressure-bearing strength, and sealing requirements of such ultra-high-pressure hoses. Increasing the crimping force with a crimping machine will also damage the internal rubber, and the rubber will undergo creep under continuous high-pressure extrusion, resulting in leakage of the transported medium within the hose.
A few manufacturers in the industry have mastered the more advanced integral vulcanization embedding connection process technology, achieving synchronous service life for ultra-high-pressure flexible pipes and metal joints. This technology realizes high-strength connections between large-diameter, high-pressure (up to 20,000 PSI working pressure) flexible hoses and metal joints through resin casting and curing, rubber vulcanization bonding, and mechanical assembly. It features excellent sealing performance and extremely high pull-off strength. At the same time, it maintains the same inner diameter of the metal joint as that of the pipe body, ensuring that there is no diameter change and stress concentration during fluid transportation. This minimizes the impact on the flow rate and velocity of fluid transportation and avoids various risks and drawbacks of traditional crimped split joints used in large-diameter, high-pressure hoses, such as low pressure resistance, insecure connections, and easy detachment under high pressure.
3. Weather Resistance
Rubber formulation design significantly impacts product performance and quality, serving as one of the core factors determining hose performance. By rationally selecting rubber types, chemical additives, and other components, the strength, abrasion resistance, high-temperature resistance, chemical corrosion resistance, elasticity, flexibility, and aging resistance of hoses can be notably influenced. Enterprises with high formulation design capabilities can select suitable formulas according to different product performance requirements, carry out feeding in reasonable proportions, and ultimately achieve the desired performance indicators. The ability to design rubber formulas reflects a manufacturer’s precise control over product performance and also requires a certain accumulation of formulas, making it a core technology in the rubber hose industry.
Some leading enterprises in the industry possess unique rubber formulation technologies, enabling their products to meet various complex working conditions in marine drilling, oil production, oil storage, tunneling, etc. The inner rubber lining layer of the hose can achieve properties such as high-temperature resistance, hydrogen sulfide corrosion resistance, high-concentration hydrochloric acid resistance, pressure fracture sand erosion resistance, and high-pressure gas penetration resistance under various complex fluid media. For the outer protective rubber layer of hoses exposed to long-term salt spray, it can also exhibit properties such as ozone resistance, ultraviolet resistance, and abrasion resistance. Superior rubber formulation technology ensures the stability of rubber mixing quality, enabling hoses to demonstrate excellent weather resistance in harsh environments and meet long-term design service life requirements.
4. Process Manufacturing Level
Excellent production processes and advanced manufacturing capabilities reflect a company’s production and technical strength and are crucial for translating core technologies in the rubber hose industry into high-quality products. Through long-term production practices and by incorporating customer feedback on product usage under different working conditions, leading enterprises in the industry have accumulated process manufacturing technologies in various production links. By fully considering the characteristics of raw materials and the requirements of the application environment, they have achieved comprehensive product optimization, ensuring product quality and stability.
Post time: Jun-06-2025