Numerical Investigation On Influence Leakage Flow Characteristics Of Honeycomb Seal

There is an inevitable gap between turbomachinery rotor and stator，the gapleads to working lfuid leakage from high-pressure side to low-pressure side. With thedevelopment of turbomachinery, high-temperature, high-pressure, high capacity hasbecome a trend. The gap leakage losses became a major loss in turbomachinery, sealtechnology can effectively reduce leakage losses.As an abrasion seal, the honeycomb seal has been widely used in variousrotating machinery, but there is a lack of theoretical research to make the sealingmechanism more thorough, so the paper deals with the method of numericalinvestigation on leakage flow characteristics of honeycomb seal.The RNG k-e two-equation turbulence model and three-dimensionalNavier-Stokes equations are used to solve the governing equations. The commercialsotfware, Fluent, is used in this work, and the SIMPLE algorithm is also adopted.Compare honeycomb seal and labyrinth seal’s lfow ifeld by numerical methods, andfocus on details of the flow field, the vortex structure, turbulent kinetic energydissipation analysis of the lfow characteristics of the two sealed. The results show thatthe leakage flow of the honeycomb seals is divided into many small vortex lfows dueto its special hexagonal honeycomb structure, and it effectively reduces thecircumferential flow. There is an excellent sealing performance.Then a range of pressure ratios，cell sizes of the honeycomb, honeycomb depthand honeycomb wall thickness are investigated to determine how these factors affectthe leakage lfow characteristics of honeycomb seal. The results show that the leakageof honeycomb seal increases with an increase in pressure ratio, but the increasing isslowing; the smaller honeycomb cell size, the smaller the amount of leakage; thegreater the depth of the honeycomb, the smaller the amount of leakage, when thecellular depth is more than4mm, the amount of leakage decreasing trend becomessmaller; with the honeycomb wall thickness increases，the amount of leakage decreases slightly.