Prediction of the windage heating effect in steam turbine labyrinth seals

Abstract

Today’s steam turbine power plants are designed for highest steam inlet temperatures up to 620°C to maximize thermal efficiency. This leads to elevated thermal stresses in rotors and casings of the turbines. Hence, temperature distributions of the components have to be predicted with highest accuracy at various load points in the design process to assure reliable operation and long life time. This paper describes the windage heating effect in full labyrinth seals used in steam turbines. An analytical approach is presented, based on CFD simulations, to predict the resulting steam temperatures. A broad application range from very low to highest Reynolds numbers representing different turbine operation conditions from partial to full load is addressed. The effect of varying Reynolds number on the flow friction behaviour is captured by using an analogy to the flow over a flat plate. Additionally, the impact of different labyrinth geometries on the friction coefficient is evaluated with the help of more than 100 CFD simulations. A meta-model is derived from the numerical results. Finally, the analytical windage heating model is validated against measurements. The presented approach is a fast and reliable method to find the best performing labyrinth geometries with lowest windage effects, i.e. lowest steam temperatures.

Keywords

• CFD
• windage heating
• labyrinth seal
• surrogate model
• algebraic equation model
• measurement results