Session: 23-10: Squeeze Film Dampers

Submission Number: 175726

Impact of Piston Ring Seals Deformation on the Squeeze Film Damper Leakage 

Piston rings (PR) are widely used to seal squeeze film dampers (SFD) in aeronautical engines because of their efficiency in preventing oil leakage and air ingestion. On the other hand, they are provided with slits for a controlled leakage in order to avoid excessive heating of the oil in the SFD.

Piston rings have a pronounced elasticity that enables mounting in rotor grooves. During SFD operation they are submitted to fluid forces coming from the oil squeezed by the whirling rotor, balanced by PR/stator and PR/rotor contact and friction forces. These forces may elastically deform the PR and modify its sealing capacity.

The goal of the present work is the investigation of the impact on the oil leakage of the planar elastic PR deformation during operation. The PR is modeled with 6 d.o.f. line elements and is loaded by fluid forces estimated from a bulk-flow solution of the SFD pressure field calculated at each time step of the rotor whirl. These forces are balanced by PR/stator contact forces calculated using the Lagrange multipliers method. The results indicate that during rotor whirl, the PR slit opening varies, and secondary leakage occurs at the contact interfaces between the PR and the SFD walls. This secondary leakage is independent of operating conditions. These phenomena alter the overall leakage of the SFD and may affect its operating temperature, potentially influencing the SFD forces.

Presenting Author: Mihai Arghir Pprime Institute

Presenting Author Biography: Mihai Arghir is Professor at the Pprime Institut of Université de Poitiers in France

Authors:

Emanuele Giampaolo Safran Aircraft Engines
Mihai Arghir Pprime Institute
Hugo Festjens Safran Aircraft Engines