Adaptive Control of Mechanical Gas Face Seals With Rotor Runout and Static Stator Misalignment

Abstract

This paper presents a control methodology that utilizes a robust model reference adaptive control technique to regulate the dynamic behavior of a coned mechanical gas face seal system in a flexibly mounted stator configuration. Individual adaptive controllers are designed for the three stator rigid body degrees of freedom based on the linear portions of their respective equations of motion. The force and moments generated within the gas film are estimated using Kalman filter-based estimators and directly cancelled in the control algorithm using offset control signals. The estimation errors are considered as bounded disturbances to the seal system and are taken into account by the robust adaptive controllers. Simulation results show that the controllers effectively stabilize the stator motion and control the stator tilts to synchronously track the rotor runout with near-zero relative misalignment magnitude and phase shift, thus, minimizing gas leakage.

Impact Phenomena in a Noncontacting Mechanical Face Seal

“…Most previous studies focus on detecting contact experimentally using methods such as vibration monitoring [15,16,18], ultrasonic techniques [19][20][21], acoustic emission [22,23] or a combination of methods [24]. Others have used these same experimental measurement techniques to heuristically identify contact signatures and apply these signatures to an activelycontrolled seal in an attempt to eliminate contact [25][26][27][28].…”

The influence of physical properties of materials used for slide rings on the process of heat transfer in the non-contacting face seals

“…Over the past years, many research works considered the results of the bench testing and of the numerical studies obtained via solutions based on complex mathematical models. The scope of the conducted research included, among others, the sealing rings vibration model [1][2][3][4][5][6], thermal and fluid flow dynamics [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], material properties [27][28][29][30], measurements and control systems [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], as well as the heat transfer in the sealing nodes, the works of: [44][45][46] but also in experimental studies covering measurements of geometrical quantities and surface structures, materials used [47]…”