Development of a Noncontacting Mechanical Seal for High Performance Turbocharger Applications

2018 ◽  
Vol 141 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Nelson

This paper presents the design and development of a noncontacting dry-gas mechanical seal for high performance automotive turbocharger applications. Turbochargers are increasingly being incorporated into high performance automobile engines to improve fuel efficiency, enhance energy recovery, and increase horsepower as compared with similar sized naturally aspirated engines. Minimizing the wear rate of tribological surfaces in the turbomachinery is critical to maximizing the reliability and durability of the turbocharger. A dry-gas seal for turbochargers and related technologies with 2–4 cm shafts has been developed. The seal provides a complete barrier between the bearing oil and compressor flow path and is capable of reverse pressure and high speed. The seal performance was evaluated for speeds between 60,000 and 80,000 rpm, pressure differentials between −0.8 (reverse pressure) to 6 bar, and temperatures between 20 and 200 °C. Structural and thermal response of the seal components to the operating conditions are analyzed using finite element methods and the tribological behavior of the seal rings are analyzed using computational fluid dynamics. The design is experimentally validated in a seal test stand. This novel approach reduces turbocharger blowby and shows no measurable wear when compared with piston ring seals.

Author(s):  
Daniel A. Nelson

This paper presents the design and development of a non-contacting dry-gas mechanical seal for high performance automotive turbocharger applications. Turbochargers are increasingly being incorporated into high performance automobile engines to improve fuel efficiency, enhance energy recovery, and increase horsepower as compared with similar sized naturally aspirated engines. Minimizing the wear rate of tribological surfaces in the turbomachinery is critical to maximizing the reliability and durability of the turbocharger. A dry-gas seal for turbochargers and related technologies with 2 to 4 cm shafts has been developed. The seal provides a complete barrier between the bearing oil and compressor flow path and is capable of reverse pressure and high speed. The seal performance was evaluated for speeds between 60,000 to 80,000 RPM, pressure differentials between −0.8 (reverse pressure) to 6 bar, and temperatures between 20 to 200 °C. Structural and thermal response of the seal components to the operating conditions are analyzed using finite element methods and the tribological behavior of the seal rings are analyzed using computational fluid dynamics. The design is experimentally validated in a seal test stand. This novel approach reduces turbocharger blowby and shows no measurable wear when compared with piston ring seals.


Author(s):  
Denys Rozumnyi ◽  
Jan Kotera ◽  
Filip Šroubek ◽  
Jiří Matas

AbstractObjects moving at high speed along complex trajectories often appear in videos, especially videos of sports. Such objects travel a considerable distance during exposure time of a single frame, and therefore, their position in the frame is not well defined. They appear as semi-transparent streaks due to the motion blur and cannot be reliably tracked by general trackers. We propose a novel approach called Tracking by Deblatting based on the observation that motion blur is directly related to the intra-frame trajectory of an object. Blur is estimated by solving two intertwined inverse problems, blind deblurring and image matting, which we call deblatting. By postprocessing, non-causal Tracking by Deblatting estimates continuous, complete, and accurate object trajectories for the whole sequence. Tracked objects are precisely localized with higher temporal resolution than by conventional trackers. Energy minimization by dynamic programming is used to detect abrupt changes of motion, called bounces. High-order polynomials are then fitted to smooth trajectory segments between bounces. The output is a continuous trajectory function that assigns location for every real-valued time stamp from zero to the number of frames. The proposed algorithm was evaluated on a newly created dataset of videos from a high-speed camera using a novel Trajectory-IoU metric that generalizes the traditional Intersection over Union and measures the accuracy of the intra-frame trajectory. The proposed method outperforms the baselines both in recall and trajectory accuracy. Additionally, we show that from the trajectory function precise physical calculations are possible, such as radius, gravity, and sub-frame object velocity. Velocity estimation is compared to the high-speed camera measurements and radars. Results show high performance of the proposed method in terms of Trajectory-IoU, recall, and velocity estimation.


Lubricants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gajarajan Sivayogan ◽  
Ramin Rahmani ◽  
Homer Rahnejat

Energy efficiency and functional reliability are the two key requirements in the design of high-performance transmissions. Therefore, a representative analysis replicating real operating conditions is essential. This paper presents the thermoelastohydrodynamic lubrication (TEHL) of meshing spur gear teeth of high-performance racing transmission systems, where high generated contact pressures and lubricant shear lead to non-Newtonian traction. The determination of the input contact geometry of meshing pairs as well as contact kinematics are essential steps for representative TEHL. These are incorporated in the current analysis through the use of Lubricated Loaded Tooth Contact Analysis (LLTCA), which is far more realistic than the traditional Tooth Contact Analysis (TCA). In addition, the effects of lubricant and flash surface temperature rise of contacting pairs, leading to the thermal thinning of lubricant, are taken into account using a thermal network model. Furthermore, high-speed contact kinematics lead to shear thinning of the lubricant and reduce the film thickness under non-Newtonian traction. This comprehensive approach based on established TEHL analysis, particularly including the effect of LLTCA on the TEHL of spur gears, has not hitherto been reported in literature.


2004 ◽  
Vol os-13 (2) ◽  
pp. 1558925004os-13
Author(s):  
N. B. Doguc ◽  
Abdelfattah M. Seyam ◽  
William Oxenham

The performance of four different fiber types processed at two different carding speeds of 85 and 120 m/min, under fixed operating conditions, was assessed. The totally novel approach of fixing the fiber diameter was used in the experiments. To serve this purpose, we designed four different fibers. In addition, we fixed the number of fibers per unit area of the carded web so as to create constant carding conditions for all experimental fibers. The fixed number of fibers per unit area was achieved by carding the same number of fibers per unit time for a given speed. We took samples from different parts of the card and analyzed them in order to enumerate the effect of fiber type on cardability. Fiberweb uniformity was regarded as a key parameter for assessing the cardability. Several other web and fiber parameters were measured in order to augment the understanding of the role of fiber type in high-speed carding. In general, data revealed that fiberweb uniformity did not significantly differ among fiber types at the two carding speeds 85 m/min and 120 m/min.


2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 1081-1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Piao ◽  
S. D. Gulwadi

The role of cylinder bore shapes in engine performance has been the subject of several studies in recent years. In particular, the influence of bore distortion on oil consumption under high speed conditions has generated significant interest. In this paper, the effect of an axial bore profile on radial dynamics of a ring is investigated. Radial ring motions within grooves due to the axial bore profile can generate significant inertial effects and also have an impact on ring end-gap sizes and lubrication conditions at the ring-liner interfaces. The magnitude of such effects is dependent on the ring-pack configuration, engine operating conditions (speed and load) and axial bore profile details. These issues are investigated in this study due to their implication on engine oil consumption, friction and blow-by. The authors have developed an analytical expression to account for the effects of radial ring inertia due to an axial bore profile for implementation in a piston ring-pack simulation tool RINGPAK. Simulation results from a gasoline engine study are presented to illustrate the effects of engine speeds, ring tensions, and characteristics of axial bore profiles on ring radial dynamics and ring-liner lubrication. Relevant qualitative comparisons are made to experimental measurements available in the literature.


Author(s):  
T-G Fang ◽  
R E Coverdill ◽  
C-F F Lee ◽  
R A White

An optically accessible high-speed direct-injection diesel engine was used to study the effects of injection angles on low-sooting combustion. A digital high-speed camera was employed to capture the entire cycle combustion and spray evolution processes under seven operating conditions including post-top-dead centre (TDC) injection and pre-TDC injection strategies. The nitrogen oxide (NO x) emissions were also measured in the exhaust pipe. In-cylinder pressure data and heat release rate calculations were conducted. All the cases show premixed combustion features. For post-TDC injection cases, a large amount of fuel deposition is seen for a narrower-injection-angle tip, i.e. the 70° tip, and ignition is observed near the injector tip in the centre of the bowl, while for a wider-injection-angle tip, namely a 110° tip, ignition occurs near the spray tip in the vicinity of the bowl wall. The combustion flame is near the bowl wall and at the central region of the bowl for the 70° tip. However, the flame is more distributed and centralized for the 110° tip. Longer spray penetration is found for the pre-TDC injection timing cases. Liquid fuel impinges on the bowl wall or on the piston top and a fuel film is formed. Ignition for all the pre-TDC injection cases occur in a distributed way in the piston bowl. Two different combustion modes are observed for the pre-TDC injection cases including a homogeneous bulky combustion flame at earlier crank angles and a heterogeneous film combustion mode with luminous sooting flame at later crank angles. In terms of soot emissions, NO x emissions, and fuel efficiency, results show that the late post-TDC injection strategy gives the best performance.


Author(s):  
Dongsheng Wen ◽  
Yulong Ding

Thermal management is one of the greatest challenges in maintaining the functionality and reliability of high-speed micro-electronic systems such as MEMS and NEMS. This requires development of high performance heat transfer media, which can not only flow through micro- and nano-channels under local operating conditions, but also carry as more heat as possible out of the system. Recent work has shown that suspensions of nanoparticles with a size considerably smaller that 100nm but with thermal conductivity orders of magnitudes higher that the base liquids have a greater potential as a high energy carrier for the micro- and nano-systems. However, it is also known that particles in a suspension undergoing a shearing action may migrate, hence lead to non-uniformity. This indicates that the efficiency of heat transfer in the micro- and nano-channels may not be as superior as expected, which bears significance to the system design and operation. This work aims at addressing this issue by examine the effect of particle migration on heat transfer in small channels. This involves development of both flow and heat transfer models, and numerical solution to the models. The flow model takes into account the effects of the shear-induced and viscosity gradient-induced particle migrations, as well as self-diffusion due to the Brownian motion, which is coupled with an energy equation. The results show that particle migration leads to concentration of particles in the wall region can be much lower than that in the core region. Particle migration is also shown to increase the Nusselt number under both constant temperature and constant heat flux conditions.


Author(s):  
M. Tai ◽  
J. Rastegar

Abstract An integrated structure and motion pattern specific design approach is proposed for optimal design of high speed and accuracy computer controlled machines including robots. The approach is based on the Trajectory Pattern Method (TPM). The current approach to the design of such machines is to assume that the machine will be required to perform more or less any arbitrary and often unrealistic tasks. This assumption nearly always leads to designs based on the worst operating conditions. The proposed trajectory pattern based design methodology presented in this paper stems from a fundamentally new design philosophy. The philosophy behind the proposed approach is that machines in general and ultra-high performance machines in particular must only be designed to perform a class or classes of motions effectively. And that trajectory patterns, i.e., classes of parametric trajectories, exist with which high speed motions can be synthesized with minimal ensuing vibration and control problems. In the proposed approach, given the kinematic structure of the machine, its kinematic and dynamic parameters are optimized simultaneously with the parameters that describe a selected trajectory pattern. The controller parameters may also be included as design variables. In the present study, the optimality criterion employed is based on minimizing the higher harmonic portion of the actuating forces (torques) required for performing the selected class(es) of motion patterns. Trajectories that do not demand high frequency actuating torque harmonics are desirable since they reduce vibration and control problems in high performance systems and reduce settling time. Examples of the application of the proposed approach are presented.


Author(s):  
Zachary G. Mills ◽  
Charles E. A. Finney ◽  
K. Dean Edwards ◽  
J. Allen Haynes

To meet the demand for greater fuel efficiency in passenger vehicles, various strategies are employed to increase the power density of light-duty SI engines, with attendant thermal or system efficiency increases. One approach is to incorporate higher-performance alloys for critical engine components. These alloys can have advantageous thermal or mechanical properties at higher temperatures, allowing for components constructed from these materials to meet more severe pressure and temperature demands, while maintaining durability. Advanced alloys could reduce the need for charge enrichment to protect certain gas-path components at high speed and load conditions, permit more selective cooling to reduce heat-transfer losses, and allow engine downsizing, while maintaining performance, by achieving higher cylinder temperatures and pressures. As a first step in investigating downsizing strategies made possible through high-performance alloys, a GT-Power model of a 4-cylinder 1.6L turbocharged direct-injection SI engine was developed. The model was tuned and validated against experimental dynamometer data collected from a corresponding engine. The model was then used to investigate various operating strategies for increasing power density. Results from these investigations will provide valuable insight into how new materials might be utilized to meet the needs of future light-duty engines and will serve as the basis for a more comprehensive investigation using more-detailed thermo-mechanical modeling.


Author(s):  
Keun Ryu ◽  
Augustine Cavagnaro

An electric turbocompound (ETC) system for heavy duty diesel engines offers significant system level benefits, such as improved fuel efficiency and reduced NOx emissions with a lower CO2 footprint. Presently, a high speed switched reluctance type motor/generator is integrated into a turbocharger shaft between the turbine and compressor wheels. The motor assists rapid acceleration of the turbocharger shaft, thereby rendering faster transient response. At steady or over-boost operating conditions, the generator provides electric power which can be used directly or stored in an on-board storage device. ETCs operate at high rotational speeds and, if equipped with fluid film bearings, use pressurized engine oil to lubricate the bearings (journal and thrust). This paper presents comprehensive predictions of the linear and nonlinear shaft motions of an ETC supported on floating ring bearings. A rotor structural finite element model integrates the floating ring bearing model for prediction of the rotor-bearing system (RBS) linear and nonlinear forced responses under actual operating conditions. Predictions show a complex rotordynamic behavior of the RBS with large amplitude subsynchronous motions over a wide speed range. However, the subsynchronous whirl motions reach a limit cycle enabling continuous operation without system failure. Most importantly, stiffness of the lamination stack mounted on the shaft has a significant effect on the amplitude and frequency content of the shaft motion. The present analysis effectively aids to accelerate ETC prototype development with increased reliability and product troubleshooting.


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