Surface Patterning and Rotordynamic Response of Annular Pressure Seals Used in Turbomachinery

Rotordynamic instability problems in turbomachinery have become more important in recent years due to rotordynamic components with higher speeds and higher power densities. These features typically lead to increased instability risk in rotor dynamic components as fluids-structure interactions take place. In addition, critical damage of rotordynamic components can result from high level vibrations of supporting bearing system, where the reduced rotor speed can lead to system operating near the rotor critical speed. Therefore, increased accuracy in modeling of rotordynamic components is required to predict the potential instability issues in high performance rotordynamic design. The instability issue may potentially be eliminated in design stage by varying the characteristics of the unstable components. One such turbomachinery component is the annular pressure seal. The annular pressure seals are specifically designed to prevent the fluid leakage from high pressure stage to low pressure stage in turbomachinery. Typical annular pressure seals have two different flow regions, an annular jet-flow region between the rotor and stator, and cylindrical or circumferential indentions on the stator/rotor surface that serve as cavities where flow recirculation occurs. As the working fluid enters the cavities and recirculates, the kinetic energy is reduced, resulting in a reduction of leakage flow. The current challenge is to model with higher precision the interaction between the rotordynamic components and the working fluid. In this dissertation, this challenge was overcome by developing a hybrid Bulk Flow/CFD method to compute rotordynamic responses for the annular pressure seals. In addition, design of experiments studies were performed to relate the surface patterning with the resulting rotordynamic response for the annular pressure seals, in which several different geometry specifications were investigated. This study on annular pressure seal design generated regression models for rotordynamic coefficients that can be used as optimization guidelines. Research topics related to the annular pressure seals were presented in this dissertation as well. The reduced order model of both hole-pattern seals and labyrinth seals were investigated. The results showed that the flow field representing the flow dynamics in annular pressure seals can be expressed as a combination of first three proper orthogonal decomposition modes. In addition, supercritical state of carbon dioxide (sCO2) process fluid was examined as the working fluid in a preliminary study to better understand the effects on annular pressure seals. The results showed that the performance and stability in the annular pressure seals using sCO2 as process fluid can both be improved.