Under high pressure, the elastic deformation of floating ring seals has a significant influence on the seal leakage flowrate and rotordynamic coefficients. The present study establishes a coupled model of the clearance flow and elastic structure of floating rings with bulk flow model and finite element method. The results show that the structural deformation reduces the clearance thickness and decreases the leakage flowrate. On the other hand, the elastic deformation reduces the direct stiffness, and increases the cross-coupled damping and inertia coefficients. In addition, the deformation induces the cross-coupled stiffness and direct damping to increase rapidly with increasing eccentricity ratio. Generally, the structural deformation deteriorates the rotordynamic characteristics of floating ring seals. In order to alleviate the adverse influences, a deformation compensation method is presented and proved to be effective.
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