GB1581703A - Seals - Google Patents

Description

(54) IMPROVED SEALS (71) We, FLAVELL PROPRIETARY LIMITED, a Company organized under the laws of Victoria, Australia, of 81 to 89 Tulip Street, Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia, do hereby declare the invention, for which we pray that a patent may be granted to us, and the method by which it is to be performed, to be particularly described in and by the following statement: This invention relates to improved seals and relates particularly,'but not exclusively, to an improved shaft seal.

Hotherto, in constructions where seals must seal between a shaft and an object and where there is relative rotational movement between the shaft and the object, seals of the lip type have been omitted as the frictional resistance imposed on the shaft and the object thereby is too great to allow for the required rotational movement.

Further to this, in such constructions, for example, free turning roller conveyors;.it has been general practice to provide a shell which is fitted to the roller and which sür- rounds the shaft. The dust seal is arranged to be fitted to the shaft and rotatable engage with the shell to provide the necessary seal. Such a combination, however, is satisfactory for only a short period as the seal works along the shaft and/or becomes inclined to the shaft axis and as a result becomes ineffective.

Then years ago, the standard method of manufacturing a synthetic rubber oil seal was to mould the basic shape of the element, and then knife trim the lip. This produced a seal in which the lip contacted the shaft in a plane at right angles to the axis of the shaft.

This type of seal ran on a film of oil, which could be considered to be- approximately .0001" thick. The surface tension of .the oil at the oil to air interface produced a meniscus and provided the sealing force.

It can be understood that this force was quite small, and that 'it took very little change in radial lip force to allow the film to becoine - t6o- thick, and oil to leak.

It Was about this time that oil seal manufacturers started to investigate the use of various means of applying hydrodynamic axial sealing forces to increase the efficiency of the seal.

The first forms of these seals had helical raisures or depressions on the air side of the sealing lip. This produced contact patterns on the shaft in which angular barbs would deflect oil back to the oil side of the seal should the seal commence to leak. This type of seal could only be used where the shaft always rotated in one direction, and where this direction was known. They were called monodirectional, hydrodynamic seals.

Several types of bidirectional, hydrodynamic seals were developed, again using patterns on the air side of the lip. In general, the patterns produced pockets with sides angles in such a manner that should oil enter the pocket, it would be wiped back by one of the angular sides.

All these types of seal. were subject to three major problems: 1. It was difficult to manufacture the moulds because of the intricate shapes, and therefore they were costly; 2. It was difficult to produce these shapes consistently because the mould became dirty and in some cases, the rubber did not flow into crevices. This produced a quality control problem, and 3. In operation, particles of dust or other 'foreign bodies tended to collect in the crevices and often reversed the effective angle. This caused the seal to leak.

Also, the conventional type of seal with a trim lip surface has a narrow band of contact in a plane at right angles to the axis of the shaft. The fact that this band is narrow means that there is not a great heat transfer area; ana underlip temperatures can be much higher than that of the surrounding oil. This causes reduction in seal life.

One of the problems with the radial lip type seal is that the seal manufacturer does not -have control of the sealing surface against which the seal rubs and is therefore to a great extent in the hands of the shaft manufacturer. Seals are also often fitted on worn shafts which are unsatisfactory for sealing purposes.

After 500 hours of running under clean conditions, the lip of a seal of the above type'would only have lightly polished a shaft, but if the seal had run with abrasive dust at the lip it would have cut a deep groove in the shaft, and the seal would commence leaking at a very early stage. This indicates the importance of dust exclusion in relation to oil sealing.

In order to compare the effectiveness of various forms of dust excluders there is used a standard oil bench test rig having an impeller at the end of the shaft in such a way that when the shaft is rotated, blades would bick up the media and impel it towards the outer face of the seal.

The media used is a mixture of 20 parts by volume of cement dust not larger than 105 microns, and 100 parts of builder's sand, not larger than 1400 microns and not smaller than 300 microns. The sand ran freely and kept the cement dust moving.

The standard test used a shaft speed of 1200 r.p.m., the sealing devices having to seal an EP 90 oil at 900F. The shaft has a surface furnish of 8-20 CLA and a runout of .007" T.I.R. A cycle of 45 minutes on and 15 minutes off was maintained for 20 hours each day. The shaft was stationary during the remaining 4 hours and the heaters switched off.

The test was found to be extremely severe, and the characteristics of the various known dust excluders were easily established.

CLEARANCE TYPE SYNTHETIC RUBBER WIPER LIP A wiper lip with negligible contact on the shaft, of the sort designed to give protection from normal dust conditions and yet not cause heat build up on the shaft, with subsequent shortening of seal life, was found to have cement dust between the lips after only 20 hours of test.

FLAT LEATHER WIPER LIP A seal having a flat leath type of dust excluder was then tested. After a test of 20 hours, there was no sign of failure, but after a test of 68 hours, the dust had started to penetrate the wiper lip, and after 500 hours it had caked the inside of the seal.

FELT WIPER LIP A seal with a felt wiper lip was tested and after 20 hours, dust had started to work its way across the felt, but there was non inside the seal. After 500 hours, the dust had penetrated between the lips, and had formed little balls of cement.

NON-FLEXIBLE CONTACT TYPE OF SYNTHETIC RUBBER WIPER LIP A seal with a non-flexible type of rubber contact lip was next tested. These lips usually wear to shaft size within the first few hours. After 16 hours, dust had penetrated the lip.

FLEXIBLE CONTACT TYPE OF SYNTHETIC RUBBER WIPER LIP A seal with a flexile type of wiper lip, having .030" interference was next tested.

After 16 hours, no dust had penetrated the lip. After 500 hours, dust was packed between the lips.

WIPER LIP TORQUE Typical torque figures for wiper lips, based on a 12" shaft diameter and in lb/inches, are: Leather l41 Felt 1 212 Non-Flexible synthetic wiper 1 > 11 Flexible wiper $-- 12 In order to appreciate the amount of heat generated by these torques, we converted the half-inch/lb torque of the flexible wiper lip on a shaft rotating at 3000 r.p.m. into watts.

A result of 17.8 watts was obtained. It can therefore be taken that roughly 50 flexible wiper lips would generate as much heat as a 1 kilowatt element, which is quite a substantial amount.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved seal which has a substantially reliable friction free engagement between a shaft and an object where there is a relative rotational movement between the shaft and the object.

It is also an object of the present invention to prvide such a seal which will have considerably long working life.

With the above and other objects in mind the present invention provides a fluid seal adapted for installation between first and second relatively rotatable machine elements, said seal including: a cylindrical body portion having a concentric bore therethrough, said body portion being adapted to engage with a first of said machine elements in sealing relationship therewith; first and second axially inner and outer lip portions extending radially outwardly from respective opposite ends of said cylindrical body portion and inwardly towards each other, said outer lip portion being of greater radial height than said inner lip portion such that said sealing lips are disposed in axially overlapping relation, each said lip portion including a sealing edge adjacent to the radially outermost extremity thereof, said inner and outer lip portions being adapted, in use, to engage with first and second flange surfaces of said second machine element in sealing relationship such that said lip portion are biased towards each other and towards said flange surfaces by the inherent resiliency thereof, thereby providing an axially directed sealing force for application to said first and second flange surfaces respectively.

In order that the present invention can be more clearly ascertained and readily put into practical effect, the preferred embodiments of the invention will now be described by way of example only and with reference to the accompanying drawings. In the drawings: Figure 1 is a perspective view of a section of a first embodiment; Figure 2 is a vertical cross-sectional view showing the seal of Figure 1 in use; Figure 3 is a vertical cross-sectional view of a second embodiment of the seal in use; and Figure 4 is a perspective view of the seal of Figure 3.

The seal comprises a cylindrical base portion 12 with a concentric bore 14 therethrough of a size which will firmly engage a shaft 16. Two radially outwardly extending webs are provided and are positioned with one at each end of the base portion 12.

The web 18 at the outermost end 20 of the base portion 12 whereafter referred to as the "outer sealing web"] is inclined inwardly of the seal at an angle of approximately 30 to the transverse plane of the seal 10.

The outer sealing web 18 is of reducing thickness at the greater radial distances so as to provide for a slight taper effect in cross-section. The radially outermost end 22 of the outer sealing web 18 terminates to provide a sharp inner edge 24 adapted to engage with the outer face 26 of a rotating shell 28.

The web 30 on the innermost side 32 of the seal 10 [hereinafter referred to as the "inner sealing web"] also extends inwardly of the seal 10, and is inclined at an angle as of 250 to the transverse plane of the seal.

The inner sealing web 30 is also of slightly tapering cross-section from the base 12 to the radially outermost end 34 and may be of - greater thickness than the outer sealing web 18. The outer end 34 of the inner sealing web 30 also terminates to provide a sharp inner edge 34 adapted to engage with the inner face 38 of the rotating shell.

The outer web 18 is arranged to overlap the inner web 30. To enable the seal to be manufactured as a one-piece construction, the outer web 18 must be of a greater radial height than the inner web 30. This is done so that a satisfactorily strong mould insert may be used to separate the two webs 18 and 30 at the manufacturing stage. If no mould insert were used, the two webs 18, 30 would naturally be fused together.

Furthermore, due to the overlap of the webs 18, 30, there will be a force exerted by each web on the faces of the shell 28 as each web 18, 30 must be deformed to allow the shell 28 to be located therebetween.

Thus, the seal will tend to align itself on the shaft 16 such that the force exerted by edge 24 on face 26 is substantially equal to the force exerted by edge 36 on face 38 of shell 28. As a result, any relaive axial movement between the seal and the shell 28 will cause one web to increasingly deform and the other to have decreasing deformation. This will result in an inequality of forces which will provide a resultant force to pull the seal back to the position whereby the resultant force is substantially eliminated. In conse quence, it can be said that the seal provides for inherent self-centering. Also, the equality of the forces means that the sealing effect by each web is approximately equal.

As will be noted, the edges 24 and 36 are square edges and thus there is a relatively large amount of matter behind each edge.

This tends to reduce distortion of the edges.

The bore 14 of the base portion 12 is provided with two radially-inwardly-project ing spaced-apart ribs 40 which act to assist the complete and efficient sealing between the seal 10 and the shaft 16 and which are located at the ends 32 and 20 of base portion 12. A further identical rib 42 is provided centrally of the base portion 12.

Located around the base portion 12 between the webs 18, 30 is a ring 44 which is adapted to provide a radially inwardly directed force onto the base portion 12 and hence to increase the sealing effect between the seal 10 and the shaft 16 as well as reducing the tendency for the seal 10 to creep along the shaft 16. The ring 44 would also tend to stop radial deformation of the seal 10 at high rotational speeds. The ring 44 acts to compress the rib 42 onto the shaft 16 so as to increase the sealing effect between the seal 10 and the shaft 16. In doing this, a couple is created which tends to force the outer web 18 onto surface 26 and inner web 30 onto surface 38, and thus increases the sealing ' ffect between the seal 10 and the shell 28.

In operation, the seal -10 i fitted to the shaft 16 and the shell 28 located between the webs 18, 30. The locating of the shell 28 between the webs 18, 30 also reduces the tendency for the seal 10 to creep along the shaft 16 due to the inherent self-centering action.

The free distance between the radially outermost portions of the inner 18 and outer 30 webs is less than the thickness of shell 28 so that the'sharp inner edges on those webs will lightly engage the shell and there by will provide an effective seal therebetween which is almost friction free because of the sharp edge contact therewith. The inner web provides a seal for preventing great oil and the like from escaping from behind the seal and the outer web provides a seal for preventing the ingress of dirt and the like into the bearing behind the seal.

The shell 28 may be arranged to rotate about the stationary shaft 16 between the webs 18, 30 of the seal 10, or the shaft 16 may be arranged to rotate within the shell 28.

The seal of this construction has superior sealing characteristics than known seals and also has less friction associated therewith.

Using the test described above, a seal according to the invention was run satisfactorily for 168 hours thereupon the sand and cement dust box was fitted. After 500 hours of running oil has not leaked from the seal nor had cement dust or sand passed the seal.

The seal does not require exactness in shaft diameter as it has been found that, for example a 3 15/16 inch seal will operate satisfactorily on shafts within 0.002 inch of the nominal shaft size.

An alternative embodiment of the invention is shown in Figures 3 and 4, where like parts are given like reference numerals with the addition of the prefix number 1. This embodiment provides means whereby grease or'oil for the bearings 150 can be forcibly injecter without rupturing the seal 110.

To effect this function the means comprises a plurality of raisures 152 on the inside face 154 of the inner sealing web 130, adapted to locate on the corresponding face 138 of the rotating shell 128. Those raisures 152 take the form of segments of a circle.

A small distance 156 is provided between the edges of the chord of one segment 158 and the edge of the chord of the adjacent segment 160. The raisures 152 are equally spaced about the inside face 154 of the inner sealing web 130 and are of constant thickness throughout.

The chords of the segments are aligned along the base of the seal 110, and the outer curved edge portions 162 thereof finish at or adjacent the sharp inner edge 136 of the inner sealing web 130.

Such an arrangement provides a plurality of substantially triangular shaped passageways 164 from the outer surface of the inner sealing web 130, along the inner surface thereof, to the inner surface of the outer sealing web 118 when in operation.

In operation grease or oil can be injected into the bearings 150 of the conveyor or roller to a predetermined pressure or until it just begins to purge from the outer sealing web 118. This arrangement of raisures 152 on the inner sealing web 130 enables the seal 110 to be equally effective for sealing shafts 116 with both clockwise and anticlockwise directions of relative rotation.

During rotation the grease or oil clinging to the shell 128 wipes across the curved surfaces 162 and is held from escaping through the seal, or is forced back into the bearings 150.

In order that this seal may be manufactured the mold insert used for molding the shape between the inner and outer webs of the aforementioned seal may be provided with suitably shaped cut-outs. These cut-outs may be formed by end spotting onto the sealing face of the inner sealing web with an end spotting tool of appropriate diameter to the required depth.

In a further alternative embodiment of the invention there may be provided an annular recess in the base of the seal between the two webs. This recess may be fractionally wider than the thickness of the shell so that the shell can position therein and hold the seal in the correct operating axial position on the shaft.

These seals may be manufactured from any suitable material such as, for example, a special compound of nitrile synthetic rubber. This material is noted for its oil resistance and has good abrasion resistance.

It can be used to seal a wide range of fluids, including dilute acids, alkalis, coolant and anti-freeze fluids, greases and lubricating oils. It is generally satisfactory between the temperature ranges of -400F to 2500F, or -400C to 1210C.

EP Oils have additives which start to become active at temperatures above 200F. These additives attack nitrile rubber and cause it to harden and crack. In applications where EP oils are used, nitrile rubber will give the best result provided these temperatures are not reached, and invariably it is best to try a nitrile seal first. If it is found that this hardens and cracks then the use of either polyacrylic rubber, or fluorocarbon elastomer such as viton, which is a material having extremely high chemical and temperature resistance, should prove satisfactory.

Whilst there has been described in the foregoing description two preferred constructions of seals incorporating the features of the present invention, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that many modifications or variations in details of design or construction may be made without departing from the essential nature of the invention as ascertained from the following

Claims (9)

claims. WHAT WE CLAIM IS:

1. A fluid seal adapted for installation between first and second relatively rotatable machine. elements, said seal including: a cylindrical body portion having a concentric bore therethrough, said body portion being adapted to engage with a first of said' machine elements in sealing relationship therewith; first and second axially inner and outer lip portions extending radially outwardly from respective opposite ends of said cylindrical body portion and inwardly towards each other, said outer lip portion being of greater radial height than said inner lip portion such that said sealing lips are disposed in axially overlapping relation, each said lip portion including a sealing edge adjacent the radially outermost extremity thereof, said inner and outer lip portions being adapted, in use, to engage with first extent of the sealing surface of said cylinmachine element in sealing relationship such that lip portions are biased towards each other and towards said flange surfaces by the inherent resiliency thereof, thereby providing an axially directed sealing force for application to said first and second flange surfaces respectively.

2. A fluid seal as claimed in claim 1, wherein one of said outwardly directed sealing lip portions includes a shoulder element adjacent the radially inner end thereof, said shoulder element serving to reduce the axial extent of the sealing surface of said cylindrical body portion, said shoulder element further including an axially directed radially extending portion adapted to engage an inner margin of one of said flange surfaces of said second machine element.

3. A fluid seal as claimed in any one of the preceding claims, wherein said first and second lip portion are of reducing thickness at greater radial distances so as to provide for a slight taper effect.

4. A fluid seal as claimed in any one the preceding claims, wherein said cylindrical body portion is provided with a plurality of radially inwardly directed ribs, said ribs being adapted to engage in sealing relationship with said first machine element.

5. A fluid seal as claimed in claim 4, wherein there are three such ribs, one at each end of said cylindrical body portion and the third located centrally therebetween.

6. A fluid seal as claimed in any one of the preceding claims, further including an annular stiffening element, said stiffening element being disposed within said cylindrical body portion and between said first and second lip portions and adapted, in use, to urge said seal body into snug sealing relation with said first machine element.

7. A fluid seal as claimed in any one of the preceding claims, wherein there are provided a plurality of equally spaced raisures on the inner face of said inner lip portion.

8. A fluid seal as claimed in claim 7, wherein said raisures are in the form of segments of a circle, there being provided a small distance between the edge of the chord of one segment and the adjacent edge of each adjacent segments, the chords of said segment being aligned and the curved edge portion thereof terminating adjacent the outer edge of said inner lip portion.

9. A fluid seal, substantially as described herein with reference to Figures 1 and 2 or Figures 3 and 4 of the accompanying drawings.