Theoretical and Experimental Investigation on Tip Forces and Temperature Distributions of the Brush Seal Coupled Aerodynamic Force

Based on a type of three-dimensional slice model of a brush seal combined with the commercial CFD software FLUENT, the study calculated the leakage flow of the brush seal. The aerodynamic forces applied on upstream and downstream bristles are analyzed and reduced to a smaller amount of point forces for analysis convenience. The frictional coefficient between the bristle material Haynes 25 and rotor material 1Cr14Mn14Ni are tested. Tip forces including normal reaction and frictional forces caused by aerodynamic forces are quantitatively investigated under conditions with and without frictions using the torque balance principle and nonlinear beam theory (by ANSYS simulations), respectively. Torques, frictional heats, and the temperature distributions of the rotor and bristle pack are studied further. Details and characteristics of the flow and temperature distributions inside the bristle pack are presented. In the experiments, besides traditional tests, such as leakage and torque tests, an infrared camera is employed to capture temperature distributions at the interface of the rotor, bristle pack and nearby zones under various pressure differentials and rotation speeds. The three-dimensional slice model is firstly verified by calculating the leakages, torques and temperature distributions of the brush seal and confirmed via experimentation. The influence of various frictional coefficients and pressure differentials on tip forces, torque and temperature distributions are also examined.