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To improve the sealing performance of straight-through labyrinth seal, an improved structure of labyrinth seal was numerically investigated. Compared with smooth labyrinth seal, the improved labyrinth seal removes part region of the bushing, and grooves are formed on the bushing. To further explore the factors of grooves that influencing sealing performance, groove length, forward and leeward angle were numerically studied. Compared with the smooth bushing, grooves change the jet flow direction, enhance the mixing of secondary flow and increase circulation area, which reduce the leakage flow rate and effectively improve the sealing performance. The results show that when the pressure ratio is 2, discharge coefficient of labyrinth seal with grooves is 18% lower than the smooth one. And when the pressure ratio increases to 2.5, sealing performance can be even improved by 20.4%.The wider the groove width, the worse the sealing performance. The leeward angle of groove has certain influence on the sealing performance, but it is not obvious. The result show that forward angle of groove has no effect on the sealing performance of labyrinth seal.
Inspec keywords: sealing materials; damping; seals (stoppers); jets; numerical analysis
Subjects: Numerical approximation and analysis; Mechanical components; Fluid mechanics and aerodynamics (mechanical engineering); General fluid dynamics theory, simulation and other computational methods; Applied fluid mechanics; Numerical analysis; Vibrations and shock waves (mechanical engineering)