Theoretical and Experimental Study of Cavitation Effects on the Dynamic Characteristic of Spiral-Groove Rotary Seals (SGRSs)

A theoretical model is developed to analyze oil-film stiffness and damping coefficients of SGRSs using two different cavitation models, i.e., the Reynolds and JFO boundary conditions. By applying the small perturbation method, the steady and perturbed Reynolds equations could be obtained. The control volume method was used for the spiral grooves, and the upwind scheme was applied to improve the convergence of the solution. The performance of the computation algorithm was studied by analyzing the mesh dependencies and computing power. A new test setup was built to measure oil-film stiffness, to verify the theoretical models, and to study the validity of the Reynolds and JFO boundary conditions. A representative SGRS was analyzed at different operating speeds and inlet pressures to investigate the occurrence of cavitation and the dynamic characteristic. The effect of the spiral-groove parameters on the dynamic characteristics is also discussed.