The Effects of Fluid Preswirl and Swirl Brakes Design on the Performance of Labyrinth Seals

In noncontact annular labyrinth seals used in turbomachinery, fluid prerotation in the direction of shaft rotation effectively increases fluid velocity in the circumferential direction and generates fluid forces with potential destabilizing effects to be exerted on the rotor. Swirl brakes are typically employed to reduce the fluid prerotation at the inlet of the seal. The inlet flow separates as it follows the swirl brakes, and the ratio between tangential component of the velocity at the seal, and the velocity of the rotor surface varies consequently. Effective swirl brakes can significantly suppress the destabilizing fluid forces as it is effectively reducing the tangential velocity. The literature shows that leakage rate can also be reduced by using swirl brakes with "negative-swirl." In this study, a labyrinth seal with inlet swirl brakes is selected from the literature and considered the baseline design. The seal performance is evaluated using ANSYS-CFX. The design of experiments (DOES) approach is used to investigate the effects of various design variables on the seal performance. The design space consists of the swirl brake's length, width, curvature at the ends, the tilt angle, as well as the number of swirl brakes in the circumferential direction. Simple random sampling method with Euclidean distances for the design matrix is used to generate the design points. Steady-state computational fluid dynamics simulations are then performed for each design point to analyze the performance of the swirl brakes. Quadratic polynomial fitting is used to evaluate the sensitivity of the average circumferential velocity with respect to the design variables, which gives a qualitative estimation for the performance of the swirl brakes. These results assist in creating a better understanding of which design variables are critical and more effective in reduction of the destabilizing forces acting on the rotor, and thus will support the swirl brake design for annular pressure seals.