Real-time condition monitoring of mechanical face seal

Mechanical face seals are the most versatile type of rotating shaft seal. Despite their wide applications in industry, mechanical face seals generally have unpredictable life and their premature and random failure is not uncommon. Seal failure is often characterized by worn faces caused by rubbing contact between the rotor and the stator. In critical applications, such as nuclear reactor cooling pumps or liquid oxygen (LOX) turbopumps seal failure may have severe implications. There is, therefore, a need to detect, monitor and control the unwanted contact between the rotor and stator during seal operation. In this research, methods of detecting contact between the rotor and the stator in real-time have been developed for a FMR noncontacting mechanical face seal test rig. The rotor angular misalignment orbit is introduced for mechanical seal condition monitoring. A monitoring system has been constructed to detect seal contact and monitor the dynamic behavior of mechanical face seal in real-time.