2012 STLE Annual Meeting & Exhibition

May 6-10, 2012

Renaissance Grand Hotel & Americas Center
St. Louis, Missouri, USA

ABOUT NUMERICAL MODELLING OF ROTARY LIP SEAL

TRACK OR CATEGORY
Seals
AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONS
Mhammed ELGADARI, ENSAM, Department of Mechanics, Mekns, Morocco
Aurelian FATU, Pprime Institute, Futuroscope Chasseneuil, France
Mohamed HAJJAM, Pprime Institute, Futuroscope Chasseneuil, France
Mohamed BELHAQ, Faculty of Sciences, Casablanca, Morocco
Khalid ZERBANE, EST, Department of Mechanics, Casablanca, Morocco
INTRODUCTION
During the last decades, great efforts have been done to understand and model the lip seal behavior in application
involving rotary mechanisms. Nowadays, the development of numerical tools to analyze such a problem increases the need of
modeling performance, such as reduction of calculation time and improving the accuracy. However, in most studies found in
literature some important aspects of the lip seal behavior have not been taken into consideration, especially the method of
calculation of the influence coefficient matrix as well as the effect of the wavelength of lip seal roughness in the
ElastoHydroDynamic (EHD) behavior.
Therefore, the aim of this work is twofold. First, we apply and compare two methods of numerical calculation of the
influence coefficient matrix. Namely, the Boussinesq method and a Finite Elements (FE) application developed in Pprime
Institute [1]. The results given by these methods are combined in the EHD model. Second, we study the effect of the ratio
(b/ ) in EHD performances of rotary lip seal by varying the wavelength
of lip seal roughness according to the contact
width b.
COMPLIANCE MATRIX COMPUTATION
As an application, the analysis of steady-state hydrodynamic lubrication of a typical lip seal is investigated. Knowing
that a numerical analysis starts with the evaluation of the static dry pressure profile and contact length, Fig 1 shows the FE
model of the seal. The model is meshed with axisymmetric stress elements. The computations are made in large displacement
and deformation hypotheses. The shaft is usually made in more rigid material (typically steel) than the elastomeric seal.
Consequently, it is reasonable to consider the shaft as analytical defined rigid element. The seal material is considered as an
incompressible, hyperelastic material and approached with the Mooney-Rivlin model:
W C10 ( I1 3) C01 ( I 2 3)
(1)
where I1 and I2 are the first and second deviatoric strain invariants and C01 and C10 are material parameters
(C01 = 2.49 and C10 = 0.5). Figure 1 shows also the computed static dry pressure and contact length.

Contact pressure [MPa]

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0

0.005

0.01

0.015

0.02

0.025

Axial position [mm]

Before assembling

After assembling

Fig. 1: FE model of the seal

Corresponding author: mhammed.elgadari@univ-poitiers.fr

0.03

0.035

0.04

This result is the starting point of the EHD modeling: the integration of the contact pressure gives the force that must be
balanced by the hydrodynamic pressure. The axial contact length defines the study domain length in the axial direction. The
second length is chosen equal to the roughness periodicity in the circumferential direction.
Before computing the compliance matrix, the following required hypothesis is made: the radial strain imposed by the
fluid film in contact is small in comparison with the radial strain imposed by the seal/shaft interference. Therefore, the elastic
response of the seal is computed as a linear perturbation of the mounted seal: the seal material is a classical Hookean model
and the computations are made in small displacement and deformation hypotheses.
The first method used to compute the compliance matrix has been previously presented by the authors [1]. The lip is
considered to have, along a height d, a 3D behavior. The elastic deformation of the lip is treated by FE method using
elements with twenty nodes for the 3D part and eight nodes 2D elements for the rest of the seal structure (see Fig. 2). In order
to take into account the global axisymmetry hypothesis, rigid beams connect the two faces of the 3D domain, giving the same
displacement for the connected nodes. Two compliance matrixes [C1] and [C2] are calculated. [C1] is used to compute the
radial displacement and [C2] is used to compute the circumferentially tangential displacement.
b
d

Fig 2: Lip seal 3D finite element model

A second and simplest method to compute the radial elastic response of the seal is to use the Boussinesq-Love method
approach [2]. This method supposes that the lip seal elastic behavior can be approached by an elastic half-space domain.
Therefore, the deformation field can be estimated by:
(2)
Due to the global axisymmetry, the deformations are computed in the middle nodes domain and deduced by translation to the
rest of the domain.
0.0165

0.0010

0.0008
0.0007

0.0155

Non-linear model
Linear FE model
Boussinesq-Love

0.015

0.0006
0.0005
0.0004
0.0003

0.0145

0.0002

Radial deformation [mm]

Radial deformation [mm]

0.0009
0.016

0.0001
0.014

0.0000
0

0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

Axial position [mm]

Fig 3: Radial deformation of the lip seal surface under a constant 1 MPa pressure field

COMPLIANCE MATRIX VALIDATION

As indicated in the previous paragraph, in order to compute the compliance matrix, it is assumed that the elastic
response of the seal is computed as a linear perturbation of the mounted seal. In order to validate this hypothesis, the radial

deformation under a uniform unitary pressure field is computed for both used methods and then compared with a FE results
obtained without any simplification (non-linear model). As the model is axisymmetry, the obtained deformation is constant
through the circumferential direction and only the axial variation is represented in Fig. 3. It can be observed that the linear FE
model and the non-linear FE model give almost the same elastic response. However, the Boussinesq-Love method leads to
very different results.
EHD NUMERICAL RESULTS
Details about the EHD modeling can be obtained from reference [1]. A first series of computations is made in order to
evaluate the influence of the two methods used to compute the compliance matrix. The results are presented in Fig. 4a as the
ratio between the value predicted by using the Boussinesq-Love model and the value predicted by using the linear FE model.
It can be observed that if the Boussinesq-Love method is used, the power loss is over evaluated and the leakage is highly
under evaluated.
Figure 4b shows the influence of the ratio between the axial and circumferential contact length (
). It can be
observed that the decrease of leads to the decrease of the leakage and to the increase of the power loss. In fact, under a
critical ratio (
1.81) the hydrodynamic pressure cannot anymore support the load and direct contact between surfaces
is predicted.

4a) Effect of Matrix compliance method (Boussinesq and FEM)

,

4b) Effect of ratio (b/)

,
Fig 4: EHD numerical results

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors' are grateful to the Technical Centre for the Mechanical Industry (CETIM) Nantes, that financially
supported this work.
REFERENCES
[1] Maoui A., Hajjam M., Bonneau D., 2008, Effect of 3D lip deformations on elastohydrodynamic lip
seals behaviour Tribology International, 41, pp. 901-907.
[2] Johnson K.L., 1985, "Contact Mechanics", Cambridge University Press,
KEYWORDS
Lip seals, compliance matrix