Investigation of Leakage Characteristics of Straight and Stepped Labyrinth Seals

Leakage characteristics of two labyrinth seals with different configurations (straight vs stepped) were investigated. Leakage flows were predicted by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for the two configurations and compared with test data. A semi-analytical leakage prediction tool was also tried to predict the leakage. It was confirmed that the CFD gives quite good agreements with test data. The analytical tool also yielded similar leakage behaviors with test results, but the overall agreement with test data was not as good as that of the CFD. The effect of flow direction in the stepped seal on leakage flow was examined. The dependence of leakage performance, in terms of flow function, on the seal clearance size was investigated. Flow function decreased with decreasing clearance in the straight seal, while the trend was reversed in the stepped seal.