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.

Effect of bristle pack position on the rotordynamic characteristics of brush-labyrinth seals at various operating conditions

Over the last few decades,the research on the effect of bristle pack position on the rotordynamic characteristics of the brush-labyrinth seals is not sufficient.To this end,two kinds of brush-labyrinth seals for the bristle pack element installed upstream of the labyrinth teeth named BSU and installed downstream of the labyrinth teeth called BSD were used to investigate the effect of bristle pack position on the rotordynamic characteristics of the brush-labyrinth seals.Using the numerical model combining the porous medium model and the whirling rotor method,the rotordynamic characteristics of the BSU and BSD at various operating conditions including four kinds of pressure ratios,five kinds of inlet preswirl speeds and four kinds of rotor spinning speeds were conducted.The obtained results show that the effects of operating conditions on rotordynamic coefficients for the different seal configurations are different.The direct stiffness,cross-coupled stiffness and direct damping of the BSU are lower than those of the BSD.The rotordynamic coefficients of the BSU are more insensitive to the operating conditions variation.From the perspective of the seal stability,the BSU is a better brush-labyrinth seal configuration at high pressure ratio,high positive preswirl or high rotor spinning speed conditions.While in the case of low pressure ratio,low positive preswirl or low rotor spinning speed conditions,the BSD is a better choice.