Estimation of the leakage for compressible gases in high-speed shaft seals

Abstract

A comprehensive analytical work to estimate the leakage rate is presented for compressible fluid flow across shaft seals. The sealing gap for this study includes geometric terms such as eccentricity, misaligned shaft, and sinusoidal waviness of the mating surfaces. A temperature distribution across the sealing gap is developed using a temperature dependent viscosity. A pressure distribution in polynomial form is solved based on the simplified nonlinear Reynolds equation using the approximate power series expansion. It was found that the seal performance is largely influenced by the eccentricity and width of the seal at high speeds (greater than about 150m/s). © 1998, The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME). All rights reserved.