Hi, does any body have an experience in steam turbine labyrinth seal modeling. I try different Fluent models - RNG k-e, k-w and I see some strange things:

1. Momentum losses on rotor and, especially gain of momentum on stator convergent badly.

2. Losses of momentum on rotor are in strong dependence from vapor flow rate, it is uncommon from designer experience

Any considerations? Best Regards, Stanislav

HI,glad to meet u in the forum! now i work on steam turbine spiral-grooved gas lubricated mechanical face seals modeling!?

can you give me some advice on it?

my most difficult problem is that the size of spiral-grooved is so shallow(about 2.5 to 10 micron)!And the gas gap between the rotor and the stator is about 3 micron!

where are u ,i want to contact with you about such problems! i am from Nanjing China!

Hi, I'm from Kharkov, Ukraine. Your seal is not a simple task - you can't use Reynolds's criteria of similarity - 2.5-10 microns is a dimension of capillary attraction forces. All your flows are boundary layers and are coupled strongly by surface tensions forcies. I have an idea - it is crazy enough to be in use - try to use laminar or Spalart-Allmaras model with special parameters for model or/and special parameters for steam - please, take into account that your real thermodynamic parameters for steam is not same as for "free" steam. Your steam is absorbed on rotor&stator. Try to read some from physical chemistry, I can recommend classical russian authors. You can write e-mails to my box directly

BR, Stanislav

Thanks very much for your advice! But i do not understand " use laminar or Spalart-Allmaras model with special parameters for model ". you know there are the model types in the software FLUENT.

can you give me some advice on if i can model in three dimensions(3D)? or i should in only two dimensions(2D)

Hi, you can start with simple 2-D model and them do extensive 3-D. I'm short in CPU speed and i don't use 3-D model (my task is axisymmetric).

Stanislav