Date of Award

2017

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Bahram Nassersharif

Second Advisor

D.M.L. Meyer

Abstract

Eaton Corporation has tasked Seal Team Fix with the challenge of obtaining the material properties of the carbon compounds used in their face seals and creating a service life prediction model of their seals based on this material property data. Eaton is a worldwide power management company with a multidisciplinary business portfolio. This project pertains to Eaton's Aerospace division, and in particular the carbon face seals in gas turbine engines and gearboxes. This preliminary design report demonstrates the research, design and analysis leading to a final conceptual decision as to how a carbon face seal life prediction model will be created. This model would allow for the justification of Eaton to purchase the more cost-effective product between three manufacturer's supplying similar carbon grades.

Once a clear problem definition of the project had been established, each member of Seal Team Fix developed 30 different design concepts in accordance with the Capstone Design Project requirements. While a small number of these original design concepts would play into our final proposed design, there were still important pieces to our necessary analysis which were overlooked. With the help of our Technical Adviser Dr. D.M.L. Meyer, we were able to conclude our final engineering approach.

Our final engineering approach consists of a three part process, each of which contains multiple studies. This three part process involves a failure mode study, characterization of materials, and finally the prediction model. The failure mode study consists of stress analyses, and pin on at testing while measuring the roughness values of the carbon materials incrementally. The characterization of materials will consist of hardness testing of the material as well as obtaining the coefficients of friction and wear rates from tribometer testing. The prediction model will consist of calculating the leakage rate of the seals as a function of their roughness values as well as the radius of the seals and using the data gathered through experimentation to create a final prediction model in Microsoft Excel.

Comments

Sponsor: Eaton Corporation

Sponsor Representative: Drew Bangs

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