Browsing by Subject "Seals"
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Item Gas Seal Leakage at High Temperature: A Labyrinth Seal and an All-Metal Complaint Seal of Similar Clearance(2013-07-31) Anderson, AlainReducing secondary leakage is a common challenge in numerous machines, particularly in steam and gas turbines. Too large leakage in seals produces a substantial loss in efficiency and power delivery with an increase in specific fuel consumption. Various seal types exist, each with unique advantages and disadvantages as per leakage, power loss, and wear. Labyrinth seals are most common due to their simple design and low cost. Their main drawback is a too high leakage due to enlarged (worn) clearances when a rotor vibrates. More complicated seal types, such as brush seals can withstand rotor excursions and ensure lower leakage rates than with labyrinth seals. Brush seals utilize a bristle bed which contacts the rotor and wears out thereby reducing leakage performance. The HALOTM seal, an all-metal seal with flexibly supported shoes, is engineered as a clearance control seal to reduce leakage even more, in particular for operation with high pressure differentials and with high surface rotor speeds. Static leakage tests with hot air at a high temperature (max. 300?C) conducted in a test rig holding a labyrinth seal and a novel all-metal seal (HALOTM seal), both of the same diameter, length and clearance, show the novel seal leaks ~1/5 the flow of a labyrinth seal for pressure ratios (Ps/Pa) > 3.5. The savings in leakage are maximized during operation at high pressure differentials. Leakage measurements with a rotor spinning to a maximum speed of 2,700 rpm (surface speed = 23.6 m/s) produce a slight decrease in leakage with increasing rotor speed. The research product is a reliable leakage data base enabling the application of a state of the art sealing technology that increases system efficiency by reducing leakage and extends maintenance intervals by eliminating wear of components.Item High Temperature Leakage Performance of a Hybrid Brush Seal Compared to a Standard Brush Seal and a Labyrinth Seal(2010-01-14) Ashton, ZacharyAdequate sealing in turbomachinery reduces secondary leakage and results in more efficient and stable systems. Labyrinth seals are most common, although brush seals are popular in specialized applications. The Hybrid Brush Seal (HBS) is a novel design that adds to the bristle brush matrix a number of cantilever pads that rest on the rotor surface. Upon shaft rotation the pads lift due to the generation of a hydrodynamic gas film while the brushes effectively seal an upstream pressure. Hence the HBS has no wear and no local thermal distortion effects. Measurements of leakage versus pressure differential are obtained in a three-teeth labyrinth, a conventional brush seal, and a hybrid brush seal for operation at high temperature (300?C), with shaft surface speeds to 27 m/s, and at supply pressures to 3.5 bar. Flow measurements are presented in terms of a flow factor to remove dependency on the air temperature and supply pressure. The measurements demonstrate the HBS leaks less (~61%) than a standard brush seal and is significantly better (~38%) than a similarly sized labyrinth seal. Predictions of flow through a labyrinth seal predict well at supply pressures under 1.7 bar but overpredict by as much as 25% at high supply pressures. A porous medium fluid flow model predicts the flow through the HBS and brush seal. The model for the HBS and brush seal underpredicts the flow rate at low supply pressures but match well at high supply pressures. Measurements of the drag torque of the test seals show the HBS has a larger torque when pressurized compared to the brush seal and labyrinth seal. This indicates that the HBS experiences a larger degree of blow-down due to the pads decreasing the clearance. The mechanical parameters of the brush seal and HBS are found based upon the flexibility function from impact load tests. A combined structural and dry friction damping model represent well the measured flexibility. An equivalent damping is found based upon the energy dissipation. Based upon the damping ratio, the HBS has twice of the viscous damping as the brush seal at a supply pressure of 2.0 bar.Item Leakage and rotordynamic effects of pocket damper seals and see-through labyrinth seals(2009-05-15) Gamal Eldin, Ahmed MohamedThis dissertation discusses research on the leakage and rotordynamic characteristics of pocket damper seals (PDS) and see-through labyrinth seals, presents and evaluates models for labyrinth seal and PDS leakage and PDS force coefficients, and compares these seals to other annular gas seals. Low-pressure experimental results are used alongside previously-published high-pressure labyrinth and PDS data to evaluate the models. Effects of major seal design parameters; blade thickness, blade spacing, blade profile, and cavity depth; on seal leakage, as well as the effect of operating a seal in an off-center position, are examined through a series of non-rotating tests. Two reconfigurable seal designs were used, which enabled testing labyrinth seals and PDS with two to six blades. Leakage and pressure measurements were made with air as the working fluid on twenty-two seal configurations. Increasing seal blade thickness reduced leakage by the largest amount. Blade profile results were more equivocal, indicating that both profile and thickness affected leakage, but that the influence of one factor partially negated the influence of the other. Seal leakage increased with increased eccentricity at lower supply pressures, but that this effect was attenuated for higher pressure drops. While cavity depth effects were minor, reducing depths reduced leakage up to a point beyond which leakage increased, indicating that an optimum cavity depth existed. Changing blade spacing produced results almost as significant as those for blade thickness, showing that reducing spacing can detrimentally affect leakage to the point of negating the benefit of inserting additional blades. Tests to determine the effect of PDS partition walls showed that they reduce axial leakage. The pressure drop was found to be highest across the first blade of a seal for low pressure drops, but the pressure drop distribution became parabolic for high pressure drops with the largest drop across the last blade. Thirteen leakage equations made up of a base equations, a flow factor, and a kinetic energy carryover factor were examined. The importance of the carryover coefficient was made evident and a modified carryover coefficient is suggested. Existing fullypartitioned PDS models were expanded to accommodate seals of various geometries.Item Parameters defining flow resistance and the friction factor behavior in liquid annular seals with deliberately roughened surfaces(Texas A&M University, 2006-10-30) Villasmil Urdaneta, Larry AlfonsoNon-contacting annular seals are internal sealing devices used in rotating machinery, such as multistage centrifugal pumps and compressors. Their design affects both efficiency and rotor stability. Traditional plain and labyrinth seals are being replaced with stators containing different roughness patterns to reduce leakage and enhance rotor response. Several roughened seal experiments with liquid and air have produced leakage data indicating that the friction factor increases as the seal clearance is increased. Simplified models based on bulk flow theory and Moody??????s approach to characterize wall friction in pipes cannot explain this outcome. This research is an extension of a 2-D numerical analysis of flat plate experiments with water which found that friction factor of these surfaces is governed by the roughness?????? ability to develop high static pressures. An exhaustive 3-D numerical analysis of several experiments with liquid annular seals has been performed using a CFD code. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent channel flow and smooth seals were replicated within 1% using Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and turbulence modeling. Similarly, measured groove seal leakage rates were reproduced within 2%. On the other hand, no turbulence model combination predicts the leakage in most 3-D pattern roughened seals with the same accuracy. Present results reproduce the friction factor ??????plateau?????? behavior predicted with the 2-D analysis and observed in the flat plate experiments. They also reproduce the friction-factor-to-clearance indifference behavior, the maximum friction factor observed in a specific roughness pattern size is independent of the actual clearance in a certain Reynolds number range, but clarify the role of the roughness length-to-clearance ratio and the actual roughness size in defining the friction-factor-toclearance proportionality. All simulations indicate that roughened surface area and roughness aspect ratios are the parameters defining the friction factor at a given seal clearance. The roughness pattern size, relevant in determining the friction-factor-to-clearance proportionality, plays a moderate role once the above cited ratios are defined. In any shape and size, shallow patterns are predicted and observed to provide larger friction factors than deep patterns. Predictions also confirm limited experimental data showing that friction factor is affected by the mean flow orientation relative to the roughness pattern. Solving RANS equations is sufficient to model simple seal geometries but might not be enough to replicate turbulent flow in liquid annular seals with roughened surfaces.Item Seal inlet disturbance boundary conditions for rotordynamic models and influence of some off-design conditions on labyrinth rotordynamic instability(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) Xi, JinxiangSystematic parametric studies were performed to better understand seal-inlet rotordynamics. A CFD-perturbation model was employed to compute the seal-inlet flow disturbance quantities. Seal inlet disturbance boundary condition correlations were proposed from the computed seal-inlet quantities using the important parameters. It was found that the cosine component of the seal-inlet swirl velocity disturbance W1C has a substantial impact on the cross-coupled stiffness, and that the correlations for W1C and W1S should be used to replace the historical guess that seal inlet W1C = 0 and W1S = 0. Also, an extremely precise relationship was found between the swirl disturbance W1C and the seal-inlet swirl velocity (????Rsh ?????? ????W0). Thus, the number of experiments or computer runs needed to determine the effect of spin speed, shaft radius and/or inlet swirl velocity on the cross-coupled stiffness is greatly reduced by plotting the simplified relationship of the cross-coupled stiffness against the swirl slip velocity. The benefits of using the new seal-inlet boundary condition correlations were assessed by implementing them into a CFD-perturbation model. Consistently improved agreement with measurements was obtained for both liquid annular seals and gas labyrinth seals. Further, the well-established CFD-perturbation model with new boundary condition correlations was employed to investigate the rotordynamics of two off-design situations. The first case considered the influence of labyrinth seal teeth damage on the performance and the rotordynamic characteristics of impeller eye seals in centrifugal compressors. The second case considered the influence of rotor-axial-shifting on rotordynamic forces for high-low labyrinth seals in steam turbines during the start-up and shut-down process. The results should provide useful information for labyrinth seal design and fault diagnosis of stability problems in turbines and compressors.Item Test versus predictions for rotordynamic coefficients and leakage rates of hole-pattern gas seals at two clearances in choked and unchoked conditions(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Wade, Jonathan LeighThis thesis documents the results of high pressure testing of hole-pattern annular gas seals conducted at the Texas A&M University's Turbomachinery Laboratory. The testing conditions were aimed at determining the test seals sensitivity to pressure ratio, inlet fluid preswirl, rotor speed, and rotor to seal clearance. The rotordynamic coefficients showed only small changes resulting from the different pressure ratios tested. Only the damping terms at the lower frequencies showed some influence. One other notable result from the testing of different pressure ratios is that the seals were tested in a choked flow condition, and there was not a significant change in the seal behavior when the seals transitioned to the choked condition. The inlet fluid preswirl only had a notable effect on the cross-coupled stiffness in the larger clearance tests. These results lead to the conclusion that a swirl brake could have some rotordynamic value, but only if the seals have sufficiently large clearance. Conversely this also means that if hole-pattern seals are being implemented with a small clearance, then a swirl brake would not be an effective way to improve the rotordynamic stability of the system. The only significant effect that the rotor speeds had on the rotordynamic coefficients were that the cross-coupled coefficients increased as the rotor speed increased. This is the expected result because as the rotor speed increases there is a greater shear force on the gas as it passes through the seal resulting in more fluid circumferential velocity, which results in stronger cross-coupled coefficients. The changes in clearance resulted in drastic changes in the magnitude of the coefficients. The smaller clearance yielded much higher coefficients than the larger clearance. All of the rotordynamic coefficients were predicted well by ISOTSEAL. The code was found to do a good job predicting the seal leakage as well. This gives more credence to the coefficients and leakage that ISOTSEAL predicts.