Research on the Influence of Steam Turbine Seal Leakage

Abstract

CFD was employed to simulate the steam flow in 1.5-stage cascades with three different seal clearances. When the seal clearance is 0, there is no steam seal leakage, no obvious secondary flow in the cascade, and the stage efficiency reaches 88.27%. When the clearance of diaphragm seal and rotor tip seal is 1mm, the leakage of diaphragm seal strongly interferes with the flow in the cascade, which promotes the formation and development of the end-wall secondary flow near rotor hub, and the rotor tip leakage flow has little effect on next stage, and the stage efficiency drops by about 2 percentage points. When the seal clearance is 4mm, the end-wall secondary flow near rotor hub and next stator casing is strengthened significantly, and the attack angle loss increases, so the stage efficiency decreases by about 13 percentage points.