A mixed soft elastohydrodynamic lubrication model of textures in a rotary lip seal

A two-dimensional elastohydrodynamic numerical analysis is conducted for a rotary lip seal with a textured shaft by coupling flow, deformation and contact equations. In this analysis, an elastic deformation equation is used to obtain the displacement of the discrete lip surface and a correction process is proposed to calculate the contact pressure in operation. Considering the effects of circular and elliptical dimples respectively, the contact pressure distribution, lip deformation, oil film load support and leakage of the lip seal are obtained, and a parametric study for textures is performed. The results show that the effects of textures reshape the lip surface topography and generate secondary fluid pressure. Micro-dimples with appropriate size can significantly reduce the contact pressure.