Cavitation occurrence in liquid film has a direct impact on hydrodynamic lubrication performance of mechanical seals. A physical model of liquid film seal in spiral grooves was built with consideration of surface roughness and the JFO cavitation boundary condition on mass conservation. The anomalous physical domain composed of spiral curves was transformed into an inerratic computational domain by coordinate transformation. Finite control volume method was adopted to discretize the liquid film governing equation and the Gauss-Seidel relaxation iterative algorithm was used to solve the algebraic iterative equation. The cavitation occurrence in liquid film was analyzed by multiple factors of liquid film thickness

surface roughness

upstream/downstream pumping function

grooving position of spiral groove and cavitation pressure. Results show that cavitation occurrence was easily strengthened at thin films but weakened at thick films. Effects of surface roughness on cavitation or pressure distribution was depressed or even disappeared with increase of liquid film thickness. In case of upstream pumping seal

the circumferential width of cavitation was larger than that of downstream pumping seal

the width for middle grooving seal was larger than that of inner grooving seal

as well as the width enlargement with increase of inner dam reached to maximum when the radial width of inner dam was equal to that of outer dam. However

in case of downstream pumping seal

the width of middle grooving seal was smaller and decreased with increase of the inner dam. Effects of grooving position on cavitation were closely related to the function of spiral groove. Cavitation shranked at lower cavitation pressure but promoted at higher cavitation pressure. High cavitation pressure was beneficial to improving load-carrying capacity of the liquid film.