Corina Höfler

Experimental Study on the Friction Contact Between a Labyrinth Seal Fin and a Honeycomb Stator

This paper presents results from an extensive experimental study on the rubbing behavior of labyrinth seal fins and a honeycomb liner. The objective of the present work is to improve the understanding of the rub behavior of labyrinth seals by quantifying the effects and interactions of sliding speed, incursion rate, seal geometry and seal fin rub position on the honeycomb liner. In order to reduce the complexity of the friction system studied, this work focuses on the contact between a single seal fin and a single metal foil. The metal foil is positioned in parallel to the seal fin to represent contact between the seal fin and the honeycomb double foil section. A special test rig was set up enabling the radial incursion of a metal foil into a rotating labyrinth seal fin at a defined incursion rate of up to 0.65 mm/s and friction velocities up to 165 m/s. Contact forces, friction temperatures and wear were measured during or after the rub event. In total, 88 rub tests including several repetitions of each rub scenario have been conducted to obtain a solid data base.The results show that rub forces are mainly a function of the rub parameters incursion rate and friction velocity. Overall, the results demonstrate a strong interaction between contact forces, friction temperature and wear behavior of the rub system. The presented tests confirm basic qualitative observations regarding blade rubbing provided in literature.Copyright

Modeling Fuel Injection in Gas Turbines Using the Meshless Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method

For predicting primary atomization a numerical code has been developed based on the Lagrangian Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The advantage of this approach is the inherent interface advection. In contrast to commonly used grid based methods such as the Volume of Fluid (VoF) or Level Set method there is no need for costly and approximative interface tracking or reconstruction techniques which are required to avoid interface diffusion. It has been demonstrated by various test cases that the SPH method is capable to correctly predict single — as well as multiphase flows including the effect of surface tension. The goal of this work is to further develop the methodology with the intention to simulate primary atomization within airblast atomizers of jet engines. The authors present two test cases relevant for the simulation of primary atomization. The shear-driven deformation of a fuel droplet in a gaseous flow has been investigated and compared to data from literature. Moreover, the liquid film disintegration at the trailing edge of a planar prefilming airblast atomizer has been studied. The geometry has been derived from an existing test rig, where extensive experimental data have been acquired. Resulting droplet sizes and shear-off frequencies for different geometrical setups have been analyzed and compared to the experiment. The results reveal the promising performance of this new method for predicting primary atomization.Copyright

Modeling of the Deformation Dynamics of Single and Twin Fluid Droplets Exposed to Aerodynamic Loads

Droplet deformation and breakup plays a significant role in liquid fuel atomization processes. The droplet behavior needs to be understood in detail, in order to derive simplified models for predicting the different processes in combustion chambers. Therefore, the behavior of single droplets at low aerodynamic loads was investigated using the Lagrangian, mesh-free Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The simulations to be presented in this paper are focused on the deformation dynamics of pure liquid droplets and fuel droplets with water added to the inside of the droplet. The simulations have been run at two different relative velocities. As SPH is relatively new to Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the pure liquid droplet simulations are used to verify the SPH code by empirical correlations available in literature. Furthermore, an enhanced characteristic deformation time is proposed, leading to a good description of the temporal initial deformation behavior for all investigated test cases. In the further course, the deformation behavior of two fluid droplets are compared to the corresponding single fluid droplet simulations. The results show an influence of the added water on the deformation history. However, it is found that, the droplet behavior can be characterized by the pure fuel Weber number.

Experimental and Numerical Investigations on Oil Leakage Across Labyrinth Seals in Aero Engine Bearing Chambers

This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations of oil leakage across a conventional labyrinth seal commonly found in aero engine bearing chambers. Measurements and simulations were carried out in order to investigate the influence of chamber geometry and operating conditions on the reliability of the oil seal against leakage.The main goal of the experiments was to determine a minimum required pressure difference Δpleak to prevent oil from leaving the bearing chamber for any given operating point. To determine this variable, the pressure inside the test rig was continuously lowered from a high pressure difference until oil was found to leave the bearing chamber. Using two pressure supplies, this pressure could be negative or positive. The results show that the minimum pressure depends on component design and rotational speed. While certain component designs may increase this pressure at low rotational speeds, thereby creating a safety margin for oil leakage, the opposite effect can manifest itself at higher rotational speeds.Selected operating points were simulated using computational fluid dynamics employing the Volume-of-Fluid (VoF) approach. A comparison of the experimental and numerical results shows good qualitative agreement of the two phase flow phenomena inside the bearing chamber.© 2016 ASME

Design of a High-Speed Rotating Test Rig for Adaptive Seal Systems

Gas turbine engines are subject to increased performance and improved efficiency, which leads to rising core temperatures with additional cooling needs. Reducing the parasitic leakage in the secondary flow system is important to meet the challenging requirements. New seal designs have to be tested and optimized at engine like conditions, like high pressure of up to 9 bar and surface speed of up to 280 m/s as well as an adjusted flow field. Flexible seal designs are an innovative approach to reduce leakage mass flows significantly. Axial and radial movements during transient operating conditions can be compensated easily, thus allowing a smaller gap width and minimizing rub and heat load.This paper describes the design and construction of a new rotating test rig facility. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the only test rig with an adjustable gap width and flow field in a high pressure and speed range. The facility is capable of up to 8 bar differential pressure across the seal and up to 4 bar back pressure. The high revolution engine facilitates a surface speed of up to 280 m/s. A traversable casing allows a quick change of the gap width during operation and simulates radial and axial rotor/stator movements in the engine. The seal movement as well as the resulting gap width are measured during operation to fully understand the seal behavior.An important feature of the new test rig is the continuously adjustable pre-swirl system. It has been designed to cover the different flow conditions in the real engine. Therefore, a RANS parameter study of the pre-swirl chamber has been conducted, which shows the adjustability of different pre-swirl ratios for constant and changing inlet mass flows.Copyright