Recent advances in magnetic liquid sealing

In this paper recent work in design and testing of two special magnetic liquid seals extending the state-of-the-art of ferrofluidic sealing is discussed. These custom seals are a moving belt edge seal and an exclusion seal. The first seal provides a hermetic barrier to solid particulates expected to be present in enclosed nuclear environments. The second seal is used on a magnetic disk drive spindle and reduces the particulate contaminants in the memory disk pack area by up to three orders of magnitude. In addition, bearing life in the spindle is found to be doubled due to reduction of operating temperature. The fundamentals of magnetic fluid sealing are presented in terms of magnetic circuit design and physical properties of ferrofluids.