To obtain effective surface morphology to control surface wettability, this work investigated the influence of protuberant and concave morphology, which are respectively represented by circle-dimpled and micro-square-convex morphology, on surface wettability. The geometric morphologies were processed on silicon carbide （SIC） surfaces by a laser-marking machine, and surface wettability was monitored by the measurement of contact angles using the sessile drop method. Correlation analysis between contact angles and morphology parameters was conducted to determine the extent of influence. The results showed that the circle-dimpled diameter had a signific^mt influence on surface wettability, whereas grooved width did not. Additionally the depth of dimples and grooves exerted less influence on controlling wetting behaviors. In addition, surface wettability transformed from a superhydrophilic state to a hydrophobic state on micro-square-convex surfaces; contact angles on cir- cle-dimpled surfaces showed a relatively slow transformation, though the surface wettability also underwent the state change.
Current researches show that mechanical deformation of seal ring face makes fluid film clearance decrease at high pressure side, thus a divergent clearance is formed and face wear occurs more seriously at the high pressure side than that on the low pressure side. However, there is still lack of published experimental works enough to prove the theoretical results. In this paper, a spiral groove dry gas seal at high pressures is experimentally investigated so as to prove the face wear happened at the high pressure side of seal faces due to the face mechanical deformation, and the wear behavior affected by seal ring structure is also studied. The experimental results show that face wear would occur at the high pressure side of seal faces due to the deformation, thus the leakage and face temperature increase, which all satisfies the theoretical predictions. When sealed pressure is not less than 5 MPa, the pressure can provide enough opening force to separate the seal faces. The seal ring sizes have obvious influence on face wear. Face wear, leakage and face temperature of a dry gas seal with the smaller cross sectional area of seal ring are less than that of a dry gas seal with bigger one, and the difference of leakage rate between these two sizes of seal face width is in the range of 24%–25%. Compared with the effect of seal ring sizes, the effect of secondary O-ring seal position on face deformation and face wear is less. The differences between these two types of dry gas seals with different secondary O-ring seal positions are less than 5.9% when the rotational speed varies from 0 to 600 r/min. By linking face wear and sealing performance changes to the shift in mechanical deformation of seal ring, this research presents an important experimental method to study face deformation of a dry gas seal at high pressures.
The thermoelastohydrodynamic performance of an inclined-ellipse dimpled gas face seal is analyzed. The pressure distributions of the gas film and temperature fields of the seal rings and gas film are presented considering thermal and elastic distortions.Then, the influences of texturing parameters, including dimple inclination angle and dimple depth, on sealing performance are investigated under different operating parameters such as rotational speeds and seal pressures. The results show that face distortions lead to a decrease in the hydrodynamic effect at high rotational speed. The analysis shows that the opening force can decrease by more than 50% as the rotational speed increases from 0 to 35000 r min^(-1). The influence of face distortion on the seal performance, such as opening force and leakage characteristic, gradually increases with the rotational speed.
