Numerical Analysis of Labyrinth Seal Performance for the Impeller Backface Cavity of a Supercritical CO_(2) Radial Inflow Turbine

For a radial inflow turbine(RIT),leakage flow in impeller backface cavity has critical impacts on aerodynamic performance of the RIT and axial force acting on the RIT impeller.In order to control this leakage flow,different types of labyrinth seals are numerically studied in this paper based on a supercritical carbon dioxide(S-CO_(2))RIT.The effects of seal clearance and cavity outlet pressure are first analyzed,and the impacts of seal design parameters,including height,number and shape of seal teeth,are evaluated.Results indicate that adding labyrinth seal can improve cavity pressure and hence adequately inhibits leakage flow.Decreasing the seal clearance and increasing the height of seal teeth are beneficial to improve sealing performance,and the same effect can be obtained by increasing the number of seal teeth.Meanwhile,employing seals can reduce leakage loss and improve RIT efficiency under a specific range of cavity outlet pressure.Finally,the influences of seal types on the flow field in seal cavity are numerically analyzed,and results demonstrate that isosceles trapezoidal type of seal cavity has better sealing performance than triangular,rectangular and right-angled trapezoidal seal cavities.

Investigation and Improvement of the Staggered Labyrinth Seal

Recent studies on staggered labyrinth seals have focused on the effects of different parameters,such as the pressure ratio and rotational speed on the leakage flow rate.However,few investigations pay sufficient attention to flow details and the sealing mechanism,which would be of practical importance in designing seals having higher performance.This paper establishes a theoretical model to study the seal mechanism,thus revealing that leakage is determined by the pressure ratio and geometric structure.Numerical simulation is implemented to illustrate details of the flow field within the seal structure.Viscous dissipation is used to quantitatively investigate the contribution that each location makes to the seal performance,revealing that orifices and stagnation points are the most important positions in the seal structure,generating the most dissipation.The orifice is carefully studied by using the theoretical model.Experiments for different pressure ratios are conducted and the results match well with those of the theoretical model and numerical simulation,verifying the theoretical model and analysis of the seal mechanism.Three new designs,based on a good understanding of the seal mechanism,are presented,with one reducing leakage by 24.5%.

ANALYSIS OF COUPLING INFLUENCES OF LABYRINTH SEAL PARAMETERS ON CROSS COUPLED STIFFNESS AND DIRECT DAMPING COEFFICIENT

Labyrinth seal can cause steam-exciting, the structural and operating parameters of labyrinth seal have effect on stability of rotor-system. For investigating the coupling influences of the structure and operating parameters of labyrinth seals on dynamic coefficients, a model of calculating dynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals is presented using a two control volume model. The coupling influences of parameters on cross-coupled stiffness and direct damping of labyrinth seal are discussed. In the conclusion, a reference of preventing steam-exciting vibration and optimum determination of design parameters of labyrinth seals are provided.

Labyrinth seal leakage and dynamics characteristics analysis based on Black Model

One of the important problems to be tackled in turbo machines is the leakage dynamics characteristics of labyrinth seals. In this paper we analyzed the effect of labyrinth seal structure and the change in fluid flow pressure on the leakage characteristics of seal. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for 3D labyrinth seal was built which provides a basis for reducing steam flow excitation. The streamline pattern and the pressure drop characteristics for leakage of steam through a labyrinth seal was investigated. Simulations of internal flow and leakage characteristics had been performed by CFD software and Black-Child model. The results showed that the amount of leakage is directly proportional to the tooth gap and inlet pressure and inversely proportional to the cavity depth and outlet pressure. The proposed CFD model provides a feasible method to predict the leakage characteristics of labyrinth seal in response to the structure of seal and the change in inlet-outlet pressures.

Leakage performance of labyrinth seal for oil sealing of aero-engine

Experimental investigation has been done to evaluate the leakage performance of labyrinth seal for oil sealing on high-speed sealing test rig at different working and geometric parameters.Typical values of pressure ratio ranging from 1.0 to 2.0 were used and the rotating speed varied from 0 to 30,000 tpm.Dimensionless Taylor number was invited to response the effect of rotation.Oil was injected at the rate from 1.2 L/min to 2.8 L/min to check the sealing capacity.Leakage was measured at different seal configurations including sealing clearance,tooth tip thickness,pitch,teeth number,front inclined angle and oil-throwing angle.Different from gas sealing,the application of oil-throwing tooth in oil sealing attracted much interest as an obvious alternative to the conventional labyrinth seal.A blocking ring was captured during testing,which establishes understanding of underlying flow mechanisms in the clearance and plays an important role in oil sealing.There is a critical Taylor number at which the leakage coefficient drops drastically.After the critical Taylor number,a parabola rule appears.An optimal composition of tooth tip thickness,teeth number,oil-throwing angle and front inclined angle exists where the leakage performance behaves better.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF LEAKAGE FLOW THROUGH TWO LABYRINTH SEALS

The leakage flow through two labyrinth seals, e.g the interlocking seal and the stepped seal, was numerically investigated. Preliminary calculation of the seal-cavity averaged pressure by using the one-dimensional control volume method showed favorable agreement with the experimental measurements. Subsequently, in-depth understanding of the fluid flow through the labyrinth seals was obtained by employing Computational Fluid Dynamics （CFD） and k -ε turbulence model, which resulted in a potential wealth of information like the streamline pattern, velocity vector field, and distribution of turbulent kinetic energy and static pressure. At the clearance of the seal the turbulent kinetic energy reached the peak value, while in the bulk region of the cavities it decayed fast. The static pressure rapidly dropped as the fluid flow went through the clearance; no distinct difference of the static pressure was inspected in the cavities. Also noted from the numerical results was that the stepped seal showed better sealing performance than the interlocking seal.

Effects of tooth bending damage on the leakage performance and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals

Tooth bending damage resulting from an intense impact by the rotor sometimes occurs in the transient operation.To investigate the influence of after-damage clearance and tooth bending length on the leakage performance and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals,three tooth bending damages were taken into consideration,including the unbent tooth damage(abbreviated as Unbent),the partial tooth bending damage(abbreviated as Pbent)and the complete tooth bending damage(abbreviated as Cbent).The transient CFD solution was utilized to calculate the leakage flow rates and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals with clearances of 0.3,0.4,0.5,0.6 mm for three tooth bending damages.The obtained result shows that the Unbent tooth damage leaks least while the Pbent tooth bending damage leaks most,and an increase of 6.1%for Cbent tooth bending damage and an increase of 19.4%for Pbent tooth bending damage are discovered at the tooth clearance of 0.6 mm in comparison with the Unbent tooth damage.Compared to the Unbent tooth damage,the effective damping for Pbent tooth bending damage and Cbent tooth bending damage is lower and drops by 9.7%–33.6%and 8.5%–22.6%respectively at the tooth clearance of 0.6 mm,suggesting that Pbent tooth bending damage or Cbent tooth bending damage tends to weaken the seal stability when compared to the Unbent tooth damage.

Effects of swirl brake axial arrangement on the leakage performance and rotor stability of labyrinth seals

Swirl brakes are usually introduced at the seal entrance in industry to improve the seal stability,especially for labyrinth seals suffering low seal clearance and high inlet preswirl ratio.However,how to arrange swirl brakes at the seal entrance to obtain better seal stability retains unknown,such as the axial distance between the brake trailing edge and the first tooth.To this end,the effects of the distance between brakes and the first tooth on the leakage flow rate and seal rotordynamic coefficients were numerically investigated at typical inlet preswirl ratios of 0.45 and0.8,and the predicted results were in comparison with the results for no-brake configuration.The obtained results disclose that the brake configuration arranged against the first tooth produces lower circumferential velocity in the downstream of the brakes as a result of the larger counterclockwise vortex moving from the brake trailing edge to the brake leading edge when compared to the brake configuration away from the first tooth.Besides,the dropped circumferential velocity in the downstream of brakes will cause larger pressure fluctuation in the circumferential direction and thus generates larger tangential force to restrain the rotor forward whirl.On the other hand,the effective damping is further increased when the distance between brakes and the first tooth decreases to zero,that is,the crossover frequency is even disappeared at the inlet preswirl ratio of 0.45 and successfully drops from 69.9 Hz to 32.7 Hz at the preswirl ratio of 0.8.

Influence of structure parameters on aeroelastic stability for labyrinth seal based on energy method

Numerical analysis of turbomachinery based on energy method is used to predict the aeroelastic stability of the straight-through labyrinth seal by solving aerodynamic work and vibration modes has been compared.It's found that the increase of pressure ratio leads to the in the circumferential direction of the labyrinth seal corresponds to the number of vibrating nodal diameters.In order to investigate the influence of structure parameters,the effect of relative thickness of the tooth tip,the width of the seal cavity and the eccentricity of the rotor on the aeroelastic stability of the labyrinth seal has been studied.The result of numerical calculation shows that the change of the structural parameters can affect the aeroelastic stability of the labyrinth seal to a certain extent,and can be applied in the structural optimization.

Effect of Fluid-Structure Interaction on Sealed Flow Field and Leakage Rate Based on Computational Fluid Dynamics

This paper addresses the issue of reciprocating compressors staggered labyrinth seal structure. The internal flow field of sealed structure, the displacement of cylinder and piston for different tooth profile angles are analyzed synchronously using FLUENT software, and the effects of fluid-structure interaction on the performance of the labyrinth seal are revealed. The results indicate that with the growth of tooth profile angle, the leakage rate of labyrinth seal tends to decrease first, and then increase. The results of fluid-structure interaction analysis are close to those of actual engineering. The effect of fluid-structure interaction makes tiny deformation in calculation mesh of piston and cylinder structure, and the coupling interaction affects the performance of the labyrinth seal.

Effect of Rotor-stator Axial Gap on the Tip Seal Leakage Flow of a Steam Turbine

The tip leakage flow in different axial gaps is numerically investigated based on the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations and k-ω SST turbulent model using commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent.The characteristics of vortexes in the flow field of tip seal and the distribution law of rotor tip leakage loss are analyzed under the change of axial gap.The results show that the flow field in the blade tip seal undergoes complex changes with the increase of axial gap.There are two opposite vortices in the seal cavity with small axial gap,namely,the large vortex in the cavity and the small vortex near the wall of the shroud.The small vortex gradually disappears with the increase of the axial gap.When the axial gap is increased to a certain value,the reverse large vortex is formed in the cavity behind the low teeth of seal,and the leakage rate increases significantly;the steam flow angle and the mixing loss also show different changes.Based on the traditional calculation formula of tip leakage rate,a more accurate calculation formula of tip leakage rate is constructed by introducing equivalent labyrinth seal teeth to consider the variation of axial gap.