Predictions of the thermo elastic deformation of dry gas seal rings in the hydrodynamic lubrication regime

Dry gas seals represent a significant advancement in turbo machinery due to their ability to handle high pressures and speeds without the use of external sealing fluids, such as oil or water, thus reducing contamination and increasing reliability. Despite their widespread use, internal working mechanisms are not fully understood to date, in particular regarding fluid film thickness prediction, which is an essential component of the seal design. The axial deflection of the rotating and stationary rings in a dry gas seal affects the development of the fluid film formed between the ring faces of the seal, influencing the performance of the seal during its operation, as well as leakage of the seal when it is at rest. The hydrodynamic and hydrostatic pressure fields of the fluid film, together with temperature gradients in the rings, induce axial deflection of these components. This in turn modifies the pressure field developed in the film. This paper focuses on establishing a methodology to couple the deformation field and the dynamic behavior of the fluid film (pressure and temperature fields) through numerical computations. Analytical relationships are employed to obtain the thermo-elastic deflection of the seal rings in the axial direction and this distortion is used in the numerical methodology to accelerate the prediction of the seal behavior. The coupled seal ring-fluid film dynamic system with 11° and 15° spiral angle is stable because the axial deflection calculated from numerical analysis produces a converging radial taper in the direction of the flow (producing a net opening force). An important result of this work is that the predicted magnitude of the axial deflection (as a result of pressure and temperature effects) under thermal and pressure loads on the stationary and rotating rings is smaller but of the same order of magnitude as the fluid film thickness.