• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.150-156
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• 2009

Precise leakage prediction for annular type seals of turbomachinery is necessary for enhancing their efficiency and various prediction methods have been developed. As the seal passage is designed intricately, the analysis based on Bulk-flow concept which has been mainly used in predicting seal leakage is limited. In order to improve the seal leakage prediction, full Navier-Stokes Equations with turbulent model derived in the seal flow passage have to be solved. In this study, 3D CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) analysis has been performed for predicting leakage of various non-contact type anular seals using FLUENT. Compared to the results by Bulk-flow model analysis, experiment, and 2D CFD analysis, the result of 3D CFD analysis shows improvement in predicting seal leakage, especially for the parallel grooved pump seal.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.285-291
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• 2014

This paper is related to the improvement of efficiency for high performance centrifugal pumps by reducing leakage loss, which is achieved by applying the grooved seal as a non-contact seal to the pumps. Various combinations of grooved seal types, including the spiral and the parallel groove in the rotor and/or in the stator, were tested by the experiment. And the corresponding hydraulic performance and the magnitude of axial thrust were measured and calculated for ten cases. From the results, the type with the spiral groove(spiral angle : $0.98^{\circ}$) in both the rotor and the stator was found to be most effective. In this case, the head and the efficiency were improved from the original design by 2.1% and 2.3% respectively at design capacity($340m^3/h$), and the axial thrust was decreased by 10%.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.56-61
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• 1986

Rotor dynamic response of pumps is greatly influenced by the nature of the hydraulic forces arising from wearing seal, balance drum and impeller, etc.. Therefore, rotor dynamic analysis should be conducted during the design stage in order to aleviate some of the vibrational problems which might occur during the operational life of pumps. Previsousely, the authors have proposed the method to obtain the dynamic seal coefficients of the annular plain seal, convergent and divergent tapered seals, parallel grooved seal, spiral grooved seal and annular stepped seal. On the basis of these results, this paper presents the investigated effect of seals on the stability behavior of a centrifugal pump. The results show the effects of seal geometry, pressure difference, clearance, length/diameter ratio, on stability behavior.