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The purpose of this paper is to acquire sealing properties of supercritical CO₂ (S-CO₂) T-groove seal under ultra-high-speed conditions by thermo-elastohydrodynamic lubrication (TEHL) analysis.

Considering the choked flow effect, the finite difference method is applied to solve the gas state equation, Reynolds equation and energy equation. The temperature, pressure and viscosity distributions of the lubricating film are analyzed, and sealing characteristics is also obtained.

The face distortions induced by increasing rotational speed leads to the convergent face seal gap. When the linear velocity of rotation exceeds 400 m/s, the maximum temperature difference of the sealing film is approximately 140 K, and the viscosity of CO₂ is altered by 17.80%. Near the critical temperature point of CO₂, while the seal temperature increases by 50 K, the opening force of the T-groove non-contact seal enhances by 20% and the leakage rate declines by 80%.

The TEHL characteristics of the T-groove non-contact seal are numerically analyzed under ultra-high-speed, considering the real gas effect and choked flow effect. In the supercritical conditions, the influence of rotational speed, seal temperature, seal pressure and film thickness on sealing performance and face distortions is analyzed.

The purpose of this study is to determine the sealing performance of face seals by numerical analysis of thermoelastohydrodynamic characteristics of supercritical CO₂ (S-CO₂) spiral groove face seals in the supercritical regime.

The spiral groove face seal was used as the research object. The distribution of lubricating film pressure and temperature was analysed by solving the gas state, Reynolds and energy equations using the finite difference method. Furthermore, the influence law of sealing performance was obtained.

Close to the critical temperature of S-CO₂, face distortions produced by increasing pressure lead to divergent clearance and resulted in reduced opening force. In the state of S-CO₂, the face distortions generated by increasing seal temperature lead to convergent clearance, which enhances the opening force. In addition, near the critical temperature of S-CO₂, the opening force may be reduced by 10%, and the leakage rate of the seal sharply increases by a factor of four.

The thermoelastohydrodynamic characteristics of supercritical CO₂ face seals are illustrated considering the actual gas effect including compressibility, heat capacity and viscosity. Face distortions and sealing performance were calculated under different seal pressures and seal temperatures in the supercritical regime, as well as with N₂ for comparison.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2020-0169/

The purpose of this paper is to improve opening performance of bi-directional rotation gas face seals by investigating the hydrodynamic effect of non-closed elliptical grooves.

A model of non-closed elliptical groove bi-directional rotation gas face seal is developed. The distribution of lubricating film pressure is obtained by solving gas Reynolds equations with the finite difference method. The program iterates repeatedly until the convergence criterion on the opening force is satisfied, and the sealing performance is finally obtained.

Non-closed elliptical groove presents much stronger hydrodynamic effect than the closed groove because of drop of the gas resistance flowing into grooves. Besides, the non-closed elliptical groove presents significant hydrodynamic effect under bi-directional rotation conditions, and an increase of over 40 per cent is obtained for the opening force at seal pressure 4.5 MPa, as same level as the unidirectional spiral groove gas seal. In the case of bi-directional rotation, the value of the inclination angle is recommended to set as 90° presenting a structure symmetry so as to keep best opening performance for both positive and reverse rotation.

A model of non-closed elliptical groove bi-directional rotation gas face seal is established. The hydrodynamic mechanism of this gas seal is illustrated. Parametric investigation of inclination angle and integrity rate is presented for the non-closed elliptical groove bi-directional rotation gas face seal.