FACE CONTACT ANALYSIS OF SPIRAL GROOVE GAS FACE SEALS USING FRACTAL MODEL
In the research of face seals, face asperity contact is an important physical reality. To contacting face seals, face contact is inevitable accounting for their contacting normal operation condition. To non-contacting face seals such as spiral groove gas face seals, they should possess a proper minimum film thickness to head off excessive leakage, while to avert face contact for long service life in its non-contacting normal operation condition. Even so, face contact does occur during startup and shutdown operations obviously and may take place occasionally when non-contacting face seals confronting some disturbances. Fractal theory can provide asperity contact load out of the influence of measuring instruments or sample length for its scale-independence, and it uses an assumption of inconstant curvature radius to correspond to practical condition. An attempt to involve the fractal theory in the research of face seals is performed in this paper.