When sealing liquids with magnetic fluid, the interfacial stability problem caused by the interaction between the magnetic fluid and the sealed liquid leads to poor sealing performance. Centrifugal force is generated by the rotation of the sealed liquid in the back blade seal, which forms back pressure to reduce the load of the seal or prevents the sealed liquid from leaking. To reduce the influence of the shaft speed on the sealing performance, a combined magnetic fluid and back blade seal was designed for sealing liquids and a combined seal experiment stand was set up. Theoretical and experimental studies were carried out. The results showed that under a higher shaft speed, the combined seal structure had better sealing performance in which the back blade seal played the main role; the magnetic fluid seal played a major role in stopping and lowering the speed to prevent seal leakage. The combined seal could run stably under different shaft speeds.

Magnetic fluid seal is the most important and mature application of magnetic fluid. Usually, gravity is ignored when analysing the performance of magnetic fluid seal and designing magnetic fluid sealing devices. With the expansion of magnetic fluid seal applications, gravity could seriously affect the performance of magnetic fluid seal, especially when the “O” ring diameter of magnetic fluid and sealing gap are both large. In this paper, the influence of gravity on the anti-pressure ability of magnetic fluid seal is theoretically analysed and proven by the experiments. The results show that magnetic fluid seal has a limit size that is directly proportional to the magnetic field gradient in the sealing gap and is inversely proportional to the ratio of magnetic fluid density to the magnetization. If the diameter of the magnetic fluid “O” rings, whose centre axis is perpendicular to the direction of gravity, is far smaller than the limit size, the influence of gravity on the anti-pressure ability of magnetic fluid seal can be neglected. However, if the size is close to or greater than the limit size, gravity would lead to a drop in the anti-pressure ability of magnetic fluid seal.

In this research, a new low refractive index ferrofluid is proposed by coating magnetic nanoparticles with a layer of silver, applying the method of modified chemical co-precipitation. This preparation method is green and environmentally friendly without toxic gases being released. Coated nanoparticles are characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and vibration sample magnetometery (VSM). These characterizations show that the silver nanoparticles grow on the surface of magnetic nanoparticles in this new ferrofluid. The hysteresis loop of this new ferrofluid demonstrates that it maintains superparamagnetic properties. A new method of refractive index measurement is applied in this research by employing a long-period grating (LPG) optical fiber sensor. The change value in the refractive index per unit concentration reduces by 16.46% compared to the conventional ferrofluid.