Flow resistance enhancement for the leakage decrease of labyrinth seals using teeth tip winglets

Abstract

Abstract A novel flow resistance enhancement technology is proposed to decrease the leakage flow for labyrinth seals adopting teeth tip winglets (TTW). The specially designed TTW is utilized to double the throttling effect at each teeth tip. In addition, the annular slots on the TTW can also generate teeth tip vertexes. These vertexes disrupt the direction of teeth tip leakage flow, enhancing the local flow resistance. To validate this concept, a three-dimension computational fluid dynamic model (CFD) is established. The flow field and leakage performance of the seal with TTWs are calculated with compassion to the baseline seal. Results show that the TTW seals increase flow resistance at the teeth tips, resulting in an extra dissipation effect. As a result, the maximum leakage decrease ratio reaches up to 15.1%