We report on the role of the modal content of surface defects on static flat seal efficiency. The
configuration under consideration is an annular contact between two surfaces, one holding
all the defects, the other being assumed flat and infinitely rigid. The analysis is carried out on
synthetic" turned-like" surfaces generated by combinations of the first 50 vibrational eigen
modes determined from modal discrete decomposition. The transmissivity of the contact, that
fully characterizes the seal efficiency, is computed on the basis of a Reynolds model for …