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The financialization of the platform economy is a crucial part of the theoretical landscape of the platform economy. However, it has not yet received adequate attention from the academic community. This deficiency has led to current research often neglecting the supportive role of finance capital in the platform economy, and consequently, there has been a lack of comprehensive interpretation of the generally poor profitability of platform companies. This paper aims to address the existing gap in the literature within this field.

This paper examines the role of finance capital, particularly venture capital, in the platform economy and offers a political economy analysis of the historical background, accumulation logic, and inherent contradictions of the financialization of the platform economy.

The paper argues that the advancement of new technologies, excess capital and labor supply in the post-crisis era, and the development of economic financialization, particularly the maturity and diffusion of the venture capital system, constitute the historical background of the financialization of the platform economy. Driven by finance capital, platform enterprises engage in excessive expansion to increase their financial valuations, forming a valuation-driven accumulation model. Financialization has caused the platform economy to deviate from its normal developmental trajectory. Platform enterprises exhibit higher shareholder payouts while simultaneously engaging in rapid investment expansion, leading to a trend of bubble-like development in the platform economy.

The financialization of the platform economy has exacerbated the socio-economic problems caused by disembeddedness, deepening the contradiction between the speculative logic of finance capital and the healthy development of the real economy. This profoundly reflects the obstruction posed by contemporary capitalist relations of production to the development of productive forces. This paper provides several key policy insights for the formulation and implementation of relevant policies in China.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the seal performance by proper design of the cavity shape of the damping holes, especially the rotordynamics characteristics of the hole-pattern damped seal (HPDS).

A new damping seal structure that comprises a circle-shaped cavity and two directional leaf-shaped cavities with a dovetail-shaped diversion groove is proposed. The comparative study on the sealing characteristics of dovetail-shape, leaf-shape and classical circular HPDSs was carried out using ANSYS CFX.

The dovetail-shaped HPDS significantly outperformed two other damping seal designs in leakage and rotordynamic performance. At a rotating speed of 7,500 rpm, it showed a 25% reduction in leakage, a 23% increase in average effective damping and a 119% increase in average effective stiffness. The cross-coupled stiffness K_xy shifted from positive to negative, reducing circumferential flow. The dovetail's inclined leaf-shaped grooves create a double vortex that slows jet velocity in the seal clearance and alters spiral flow direction, resulting in a uniform pressure distribution and enhanced rotor stability at low frequencies.

This study proposes a novel HPDS with dovetail-shaped diversion grooves. The seal can realize the simultaneous improvement of rotordynamics and leakage characteristics compared to the current seal structure.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-04-2024-0127/