Title: Hydrostatic effect of rectangle micro-texture on liquid-lubricated mechanical seal

Authors: Yi Xie; Yongjian Li; Yuming Wang

Addresses: State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China ' State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

Abstract: In this paper, the hydrostatic effect of rectangle micro-texture (RMT) on liquid-lubricated mechanical seal is numerically investigated. A model of liquid-lubricated mechanical seal with RMT is developed with finite element method (FEM). The hydrostatic effect of the RMT and the circular micro-texture (CMT) on the partial surface micro-texture liquid-lubricated mechanical seal are compared and analysed. Results show that the optimised RMT can greatly improve the hydrostatic opening force of liquid-lubricated mechanical seal. The hydrostatic opening force of the RMT with the orientation factor γ = 1/3 is about 18% larger than that of the CMT in the typical case. Furthermore, the influence of the RMT orientation factor on the hydrostatic opening force, the leakage and the efficiency parameter of mechanical seal design are discussed under different operating parameters and micro-texture parameters.

Keywords: rectangle microtexture; RMT; hydrostatic effect; orientation factor; liquid lubrication; mechanical seals; finite element method; FEM; hydrostatic opening force; seal design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNM.2013.052879

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing, 2013 Vol.9 No.1, pp.29 - 42

Received: 25 Aug 2012
Accepted: 18 Sep 2012
Published online: 31 Mar 2014 *

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