Sealing Ring

The Simplex-Compact SC 2000 seal is the latest design, aimed at:

• The improvement of environmental protection
• A further extension of lifetime
• An increase in operating safety

The work entailed required a re-thinking of the present sealing ring technology and has led to a further development.

Micro lubricating film
The quality of a sterntube seal depends ultimately on the technical quality of the contact area between the sealing ring and the liner, the so-called "sealing or lubricating gap".

Only an extremely thin and stable lubricating film ensures optimum seal performance.

Intelligent Simplex-Compact knee
A special feature of the Simplex-Compact sealing rings is the knee shape which is an essential prerequisite for the synchronous following movement of the sealing ring with radial shaft movements.

A further development goal was to dispense with the inflexible lip support. This has resulted in an improvement of the SC 2000 sealing ring with its intelligent complex knee. With varying vessel draughts the SC 2000 sealing ring is subjected to varying loads, whereby the ring knee absorbs this load by pressing itself against the back wall of the housing accordingly.

The newly developed knee and the modified lip of the SC 2000 sealing ring ensure that the load on the ring does not increase linearly with the hydrodynamic pressure.

Relative to the operating pressur the load on the ring is reduced. Further, the forces are led into the ring lip in such a way that the lip remains angularly stable under varying pressures.

The "Click" clamping concept
The "Click" concept is a design feature of the SC 2000 seal allowing the seal rings to be held in the respective housing rings during fitting without the risk of tilting, twisting or even falling out in the case of large-diameter seals.

This defined and dedicated holding position is a prerequisite for the correct behaviour of the "intelligent knee", and vital for the micro-lubricating film between seal-ring lip edge and liner surface.

Because the "Click" ensures that the ring is in one plane, and not twisted, the lip edge contact area on the liner is kept to a minimum, and entry of water or exit of oil is prevented.

High operating reliability
The SC 2000 sets new standards for the industry. The changes in design brought about an improved load characteristic on the seal ring lip, resulting in a much longer operating life for the wear parts - the liner and ring.

The pressure within the seal housing chamber is actively controlled by connecting the respective chamber via a pipeline to:

• a 20 litre tank mounted at a defined height above the shaft in the engine room
• the "leakproof" system
  or
• the "airspace" non-pollution seal system