Abstract
Recently, high performance machining center requires special type of sealing mechanism that prevent a leakage of oil jet or oil mist lubrication system. Sealing of oil-air mixture plays important r oles to have an enhanced lubrication for performance machining center. Current work emphasizes on investigations of the air jet effect on the protective collar type labyrinth seal. To improve sealing capabilities of conventional labyrinth seals, air jet is injected against the leakage flow. In this study, an adapted model is introduced to improve sealing capability of conventional non-contact type seals. It has a combined geometry of a protective collar type and an air jet type. Both of a numerical analysis by CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and experimental measurements are carried out to verify sealing improvement. The sealing effects of the leakage clearance and the air jet magnitude aic studied in various parameters. Gas or liquid has been used as a working fluid for most of nori-contact types seals including the labyrinth seal. However, it is more reasonable to regard two-phase flows because oil mist or oil jet are used for high performance spindle's lubrication. In this study, working fluid is regarded as two phases that are mixed flow of oil and air phase. Both of turbulence and compressible flow model are also introduced in a CFD analysis to represent an isentropic process. Estimation of non-leaking property is determined by amount of pressure drop in the leakage path. Results of pressure drop in the experiment match reasonably to those of the simulation by introducing a flow coefficient. Effect of the sealing improvement is explained as decreasing of leakage clearance by air jetting. Thus, sealing effect is improved by amount of air jetting even though clearance becomes larger
