Performance Research on a Bionic Multi Wing-like Spiral Grooved Dry Gas Face Seal

In order to effectively solve the bottleneck problems that dry gas seal (DGS) open hard, and broken gas film stiffness or more leakage when it operated at high speed or pressure, this paper focused on improving seal reliability and service life of DGS. Based on design of DGS and bionic on birds, a new type of DGS was presented with multi-wing like spiral groove onto its faces (MW-DGS). With the gas lubrication theory, geometric model of grooved face and the Reynolds equation for gas film pressure were set up. The sealing performance of MW-DGS and its derived types were studied by finite difference method. The results show, compared to DGS with typical spiral groove dry gas seal or double wing-like spiral groove, MW-DGS and derived types were good at excellent face opening behavior or operating stability at high speed, especially sealing abilities of derived types. Many suitable derived types were presented, and the main geometric parameters of biomorphic grooves were optimized. It demonstrates that bionic design was a new and advanced method, which provided foundation on the design of DGS at the extreme working conditions. Bionic design could broaden our thinking of DGS and other lubricated surface of moving parts.