Numerical Investigations On Combined Labyrinth Seal Structure Of Ball Bearing

Ball bearing is one of the very important categories in rolling bearing, it is widely used in aerospace, automobile, machine tool and other industrial fields, it’s sealing performance directly affects the service life of ball bearing. Non-contact sealing has many advantages such as less friction, less heat and long life, it is one of seal types that ball bearings adopted commonly. It has very important theoretical significance and application value to study ball bearing non-contact seal structure and the influence mechanism of structure parameters on the leakageThe main results and contents of the research are as followings:(1) The research status of non-contact seal structure and the mechanism of labyrinth seal are analyzed in this paper, according to the current combined labyrinth seal structure of ball bearing, two new kinds of combined labyrinth seal structure is provided with the development needs of a co-operative bearing company, such as the radial straight-through and the radial interlocking labyrinth seal structure.(2) The numerical calculation model on the radial straight-through and the radial interlocking labyrinth seal structure is established. Besides, the grid division method, the numerical simulation method, turbulence model, numerical solution method, the boundary conditions, the convergence criterion and the comparison method of leakage is identified. It is laid foundations for the numerical study.(3) Take a specific type of ball bearing for example, the influence mechanism of the radial straight-through and the radial interlocking labyrinth seal structure parameters on the leakage is studied by the CFD technology. Beside, the optimized result of two kinds of labyrinth seal structures is compared. The studies show that: for the two kinds of labyrinth seal structure, the amount of leakage increase as gap width increases, decrease as the number or depth of cavity increase, and it presents a decrease at the start and then an increase with the width of cavity increase. Besides, for the radial straight-through labyrinth seal structure, the leakage presents a decrease at the start and then an increase with the angle increase, but for the radial interlocking labyrinth seal structure, the amount of leakage increase as the angle increases. The optimized radial interlocking labyrinth seal structure showed higher obvious sealing effect.The seal mechanism of ball bearing combined labyrinth seal structure is explored in this article, it provide useful help for the design and optimization of the structure parameters on the labyrinth. Besides, it has a certain reference value for the development of ball bearing non-contract seal structure in the future.