A Study on the Leakage Characteristics of a Stepped Labyrinth Seal with a Ribbed Casing

Min-Seok Hur, Seong-Won Moon and Tong-Seop Kim
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Min-Seok Hur: Graduate School, Inha University, 100 Inha-ro, Michuhol-Gu, Incheon 22212, Korea
Seong-Won Moon: Graduate School, Inha University, 100 Inha-ro, Michuhol-Gu, Incheon 22212, Korea
Tong-Seop Kim: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inha University, 100 Inha-ro, Michuhol-Gu, Incheon 22212, Korea

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 13, 1-15

Abstract: A new type of stepped seal with a ribbed casing is proposed to efficiently reduce the leakage at the tips of turbine blades. The leakage characteristics of two different types of labyrinth seals (conventional seal vs. ribbed seal) were compared and analyzed through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in a wide operating range of pressure ratios and clearances. The analysis showed that the ribbed seal has superior leakage performance to the conventional seal at all clearance sizes. With the same clearance size (S/H = 1.0), the flow function of the ribbed seal was approximately 21.5–42.6% less than that of the conventional seal. Also, different trends of variation in the flow function according to the increase of the clearance were found between the conventional and ribbed seals. The leakage flow inside the labyrinth seal was analyzed to explain the cause of this difference in tendency, and it was confirmed that the added ribs cause collision between the leakage flow and the tooth wall, even with the increase of the clearance. Also, the ribbed seal enables operation at a larger clearance with the same leakage performance when comparing the absolute leakage flow rate of the two seals. In addition, a parametric study on the influence of the rib height and rib inclination angle revealed that the flow function generally decreases as both parameters increase.

Keywords: stepped labyrinth seal; turbine; rib; clearance; leakage; flow function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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