Abstract
Phase change flows between seal faces play an important role in the performance of mechanical seals. Cavitation and boiling phenomena are observed to occur between mechanical seal faces. Most studies on phase change flows in mechanical seals focus on only one phenomenon. However, in different mechanical seal structures, for example, sector-groove seals, cavitation and boiling may appear simultaneously when the temperature and speed are changed. This study contributes to ongoing investigations in the field by proposing a phase change flow model considering both cavitation and boiling in mechanical seals. First, the governing equations and main features of the proposed model are discussed based on the mass conservation law, which is particularly useful in cases where both cavitation and boiling occur. Then, numerical schemes were constructed by employing the liquid volume fraction and analyzed by considering two different forms of fluid flux equations. Case studies of two models, namely, the wavy face seal and hydrostatic seal, were conducted and separately analyzed, and the numerical results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed model. Then, numerical simulation and experiment of a sector-groove seal were conducted to demonstrate the advantage of the proposed model. The proposed model is especially effective for analyzing the two-phase flow field bounded by complex solid surfaces.
Highlights
Two–phase change flow can be observed in the mechanical seals of various hydrodynamic systems, such as pumps, marine propellers, and underwater bodies.[1]
Phase change flows between seal faces play an important role in the performance of mechanical seals
We considered the first-order controlled variation scheme (CVS)
Summary
Two–phase change flow can be observed in the mechanical seals of various hydrodynamic systems, such as pumps, marine propellers, and underwater bodies.[1]. We mainly discuss the cavitation and boiling models for application to mechanical seals in which the thickness distributions are known. Lebeck[8,9] presented a mixed friction hydrostatic face seal model considering phase change (boiling) in the region near the inner radius. For dynamic seals characterized by a thickness distribution, Payvar and Salant[13] discussed a computational method for cavitation using the Jakobsson, Floberg, and Olsson (JFO) cavitation boundary conditions, in which cavitation occurred at the low-pressure boundary. The JFO boundary condition assumes a pressure equal to zero at the cavitation boundary This is not valid for the phase change (boiling) case in hydrostatic seals. A new model for the phase change flows of mechanical seals based on the combination of cavitation and boiling is proposed in this paper.
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