Sealing rings in the wet clutch of heavy vehicles are vulnerable and weak. A key issue in designing and applying sealing rings is predicting the state of the seal contact quickly and accurately. A mixed-lubrication model of the sealing ring is developed on the basis of the load-sharing concept. A theoretical model is proposed to estimate the hydrodynamic and asperity contact behaviour of the sealing ring. The friction coefficients are calculated and compared under different operating conditions. The results cover the entire lubrication regime, including full-film lubrication, mixed lubrication and boundary lubrication. Experiments are conducted on a special test rig for sealing rings. General agreement is observed between the experiments and the simulations. The proposed method is simple but realistic and significantly improves the simulation efficiency. Designing the sealing ring quickly and accurately benefits the transmission system of heavy vehicles.
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