Numerical study of turbine rim seals performance with different sealing structures

The unsteady large-scale vortex near the turbine rim has an important influence on the sealing performance. Characteristics and performance of four sealing structures are researched in this paper. Three-dimensional unsteady numerical simulation was adopted to deeply reveal the characteristics of the rim sealing vortex and its influence mechanism on the rim sealing performance. The results show that the rim seal vortex structure induced by the interaction between ingested gas and sealing flow in the gap is the leading cause of unsteady flow in the rim. The vortex size is suppressed with the increasing seal flow rate or a Chute seal structure. However, the rim seal vortex exit in the cavity gap under a low seal flow rate can suppress the gas intrusion and improve the sealing efficiency of the turbine cavity even with a simple sealing structure. The Chute sealing structure achieves better performance among the four sealing structures studied in this paper. It can achieve complete sealing under a low sealing flow rate of 0.5% and has less impact on the aerodynamic performance of the mainstream even with high sealing flow rate. The research of this paper has guiding significance for further understanding the sealing mechanism and optimizing the design of the sealing structures.