Investigation of Flow through a Labyrinth Seal

Abstract

Growing performance requirements for gas turbines have led to a continuous increase in gas temperature and pressure ratios. Together with the resulting increase in cooling flows, this requires more and more minimization and control of internal gas leaks. To meet future performance goals, the application of a new seal design and an improved understanding of leakage flow characteristics are of particular importance. The air mass flow through a labyrinth seal designed for a low-pressure turbine has been determined both through analytical calculus and CFD modeling. Different radial clearances and different air temperatures have been considered. In the next stage, the results will be validated through experiments.

Keywords

• labyrinth seal
• leakage flow
• turbo-machinery
• computational fluid dynamics (cfd)