An elastohydrodynamic analysis of a rotary lip seal is performed numerically,incorporating both the fluid mechanics of the lubricating film and the elastic deformationof the lip. Asperities on the lip surface dominate the behavior of the flow field in thelubricating film, and are taken into account through the use of flow factors. Sinceprevious analyses treated those asperities deterministically, they required very largecomputation times. The present approach is much less computationally intensive becausethe asperities are treated statistically.Since cavitation and asperity orientation play important roles, these are taken intoaccount in the computation of the flow factors. An asperity distortion analysis isintroduced to model the complex variations in the asperity distribution on the surface ofthe lip.Results of the analysis show how the operating parameters of the seal and thecharacteristics of the asperities affect such seal characteristics as the thickness of thelubricating film, reverse pumping rate, power dissipation and lift-off speed.
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