Wear Analysis for Floating Ring Seal in High-Temperature and High-Speed Bearing Cavity Based on Digital Twin

Floating ring seals are widely used as a leakage control solution in high-speed rotating machinery such as aircraft engines and gas turbines. Previous studies have mainly focused on its theory and application. However, the wear behavior between the floating ring and the rotor is seldom analyzed and reported, which is helpful for the seal structure design and optimization. To address the issue, a novel digital twin model is proposed in this study, where we derived the floating ring center of mass displacement equation under collision conditions and introduced a collision coefficient. The effectiveness of the proposed model was validated using a dataset from the floating ring seal test bench we designed. Results demonstrate that the floating ring and the rotor undergo a series of complex processes, namely fretting wear, localized wear, and circumferential wear, with the vibration amplitude of the rotor increasing, which also indicates that the proposed model has the potential to enhance the life prediction ability of the floating ring seal in diverse practical settings.