General presentation > Keynote speaker

Dr. Alan O. Lebeck

Principal engineer, Mechanical Seal Technology Inc.

Albuquerque, NM, USA

Biography

Alan O. Lebeck received his B.S. (1964), M. S. (1965), and Ph.D. (1968) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

After working for Shell Development Company (Shell Oil) for two years, he started teaching design courses in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM.  From 1971 to 1987, he served on the faculty as Professor and Chairman of the Department and as Director of the Bureau of Engineering Research.  During this period, he developed a mechanical seal research program under the sponsorship of the National Science Foundation and the US Navy.  This work served as the basis for numerous papers, reports, and inventions.

In 1987 he started Mechanical Seal Technology Inc (MSTI).  MSTI has conducted research and product development, design software development, and consulting, all in relation to mechanical seals.

In 1991 his book "Principles and Design of Mechanical Face Seals” was published by John Wiley.  From 1993 through 2002 he was a member of the Texas A&M Pump Symposium Advisory Committee.  For a number of years he taught short course segments on mechanical seals at STLE meetings and the Pump Users Symposium.

During the past twenty years he has developed and supported software for the seal industry that is widely used for the design and analysis of mechanical seals.  He is currently active with seal software development and consulting at MSTI.

Seal Modeling and Design for Extremes

The engineering design of liquid and gas seals for steady, clean fluid operation is well developed. However, for mixed phase fluids and seals in transient operation, there is a lot to yet be understood. Several cases are examined. First is the common application for a contacting seal where start stop operation causes unfavorable wear. Transient analysis can help understand this behavior. Two phase operation for axisymmetric contacting seals would seem straightforward, but in fact, few fluids are pure. Phase change occurs over a range and influences operation and wear. Then, gas seals in transient operation such as the lifting off during startup have special challenges. Transient analysis can be used to show how this operation can cause wear. The application of periodic feature face seals to multiphase applications like carbon dioxide is becoming more common and these seals are particularly difficult to model because even for pure fluids one has regions of liquid, liquid-vapor mix, and pure vapor. Some techniques to model such seals have been developed and provide some insight. 

This paper reviews the design issues for these extreme environments and shows how seal modeling can be applied to gain some understanding, and also shows the limits of such analysis and where new research is needed.