Abstract:In order to explore the effects of surface roughness on the liquid film seals,based on the massconservative JFO cavitation model,the physical model of radial groove liquid film seals with surface roughness was established,and the average flow Reynolds equation with consideration of surface roughness was discretized by finite control volume method and solved by GaussSeidel relaxation iteration method.Effects of surface roughness,film thickness and operation characteristic number on the cavitation occurrence and loadcarrying capacity were analyzed.Results indicate that,by the cavitation area rate as the criterion,cavitation zone becomes larger but loadcarrying capacity becomes smaller as the increase of film thickness,and both of them become larger when the characteristic number is increased.Larger surface roughness can help to improve the cavitation zone and loadcarrying capacity as film thickness is relatively smaller as below 5~6 microns,but the effect of surface roughness is wakened and even is ignored.As well,larger surface roughness contributes to improving the loadcarrying capacity for the case of higher characteristic number and also increasing the cavitation zone under the condition of smaller characteristic number.