Abstract
In a liquid environment, the turbulence intensity of the interfacial layer between the magnetic and sealing medium fluids in magnetic liquid seals directly affects the layer stability. Reducing the maximum turbulence intensity of the fluid interface layer effectively improves the stability of the magnetic fluid rotary seal. In this study, we simulated magnetic fluid sealing devices with different structures in liquid environments using the FLUENT software. The simulation results were verified through experimental analyses of the turbulence intensity at the sealing interface. The maximum turbulence intensity of the liquid interface layer increased with increasing shaft speed. At the same speed, the turbulence intensity was maximized at the shaft interface before gradually decreasing in a multistage linear pattern along the radial direction. A magnetic liquid seal with an optimized structure (OS) in the liquid environment was designed based on these results. The maximum turbulence intensity of the liquid interface layer in the OS was independent of the rotation speed and was more than 20% lower than that that in the traditional structure. These results provide a reference for designing magnetic liquid sealing devices.
Highlights
Magnetic liquid seals offer several advantages over traditional mechanical seals, including zero leakage [1,2], easy maintenance [3], no pollution, and high reliability [4,5], thereby attracting the attention of many researchers
Van der Wal et al reported that when the sealing and magnetic liquid interfaces are unstable, the liquids emulsify, leading to seal failure [7]
Mass conservation can be described as the equality of the mass of the fluid flowing out of the control body to that reduced by the density change in the control body in the same time interval
Summary
Magnetic liquid seals offer several advantages over traditional mechanical seals, including zero leakage [1,2], easy maintenance [3], no pollution, and high reliability [4,5], thereby attracting the attention of many researchers. Qian proposed an approximate treatment method for liquid interface stability analysis and reported that interface instability is the main cause of seal failure [10]. These reports confirmed that seal failure is mainly caused by the instability of the fluid medium interface layer. A combination of practical experiments and numerical simulations was used to investigate the traditional magnetic fluid seal structure and obtain the trend in the turbulence intensity at the interface layer of the fluid medium as a function of the rotation speed. The turbulence intensities at the fluid medium interface layers of the TS and OS at different speeds were compared and the simulation results were verified experimentally.
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