The influence of annular seal clearance to the critical speed of the multistage pump

TLDR: In this article, the authors used the CFD method to conduct the numerical simulation for the flow field of annular seal clearance and obtained the radial and tangential forces to calculate the annular dynamic coefficients.

Abstract: In the multistage pump of high head, pressure difference in two ends of annular seal clearance and rotor eccentric would produce the sealing fluid force, the effect of which can be expressed by a damping and stiffness coefficient. It has a great influence on the critical speed of the rotor system. In order to research the influence of the annular seal to the rotor system, this paper used CFD method to conduct the numerical simulation for the flow field of annular seal clearance. The radial and tangential forces were obtained to calculate the annular dynamic coefficients. Also dynamic coefficient were obtained by Matlab. The rotor system was modeled using ANSYS finite software and the critical speed with and without annular seal clearance were calculated. The result shows: annular seal's fluid field is under the comprehensive effect of pressure difference and rotor entrainment. Due to the huge pressure difference in front annular seal, fluid flows under pressure difference; the low pressure difference results in the more obvious effect on the clearance field in back annular seal. The first order critical speed increases greatly with the annular seal clearance; while the average growth rate of the second order critical speed is only 3.2%; the third and fourth critical speed decreases little. Based on the above result, the annular seal has great influence to the first order speed, while has little influence on the rest.