Abstract
Based on the fluid hydrodynamic lubrication theory, a mathematical model of liquid film lubrication was established for the waviness hydrodynamic mechanical seal of a reactor coolant pump. The influences of the waviness amplitude and pressure on the sealing performance were investigated by the numerical simulation. The numerical results showed that the leakage rate increases linearly as the pressure and waviness amplitude increase under the force balance condition. The minimum liquid film thickness decreases first and then increase as the pressure increases. Stationary slide rings with three different waviness amplitudes were processed using the pre-deformation method and tested at different pressure and temperature. The experiments showed that all the three kinds of seal have good stability under different pressure conditions. The experimental results showed that the leakage rate is influenced by the pressure, waviness amplitude, and temperature, and the leakage rate increases as the pressure increases. The comparison between experimental and numerical results showed that both the temperature and pressure affect the seal performance, and tends to a smaller leakage rate, which is quite different from the numerical values. Therefore, the multi-physics coupling effect should be considered in the numerical analysis of seal performance, and this will be studied in the further works.
Highlights
The reactor coolant pump (RCP) is one of the most critical pieces of primary equipment in a nuclear power plant, and the only rotating equipment in the nuclear island which suffers both high temperature and pressure [1]
To study the 3D detailed behavior of the wavy tilt dam (WTD) mechanical seal, based on the Reynolds equation [17,18], Liu et al [14,19,20,21] simulated and analyzed the WTD seal based on the three-dimensional thermal elastic hydrodynamic model, and the results showed that the sealing mechanism was the combined effect of hydrodynamic and hydrostatic
The streamline upwind/Petrov–Galerkin (SUPG) finite element method is applied to solve the lubrication equation considering the mass-conservation with JFO cavitation boundary
Summary
The reactor coolant pump (RCP) is one of the most critical pieces of primary equipment in a nuclear power plant, and the only rotating equipment in the nuclear island which suffers both high temperature and pressure [1]. Djamaï et al [22] established a numerical model of thermo-hydrodynamic mechanical face seals based on the coupling Reynolds equation and energy equation to analyze the influence of operating and design parameters. The influences of waviness amplitude, temperature and pressure on the leakage rate of the mechanical seal systematically were studied by comparing the numerical results with experimental results. It obtains the difference between theoretical analysis and experimental research, which provides a reference for the parameter optimization design of the seal end face and the coupling study of multiple physical fields
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
