Design and Development of Advance Damper Seal for Cryogenic Engines

Abstract

he rotating machines in the steam engine era used seals have been intended solely to control the leakage. As part of the technological advancements, the speed of shafts in mechanical devices has increased considerably from 10,000 rpm to 2,00,000 rpm or higher. This increase in speed leads to many complications such as an increase in the vibration as well as leakage, power loss which leads to energy loss between pressure differential zones. Hence, a damper seal is used to reduce leakage and reduce vibration; however, in this paper, the primary goal of the seal is to minimize leakage which can be reduced by creating different patterns on the damper seal. After studying various seals, it was observed that the honeycomb structure seal can provide superior rotordynamic damping characteristics along with low leakage rate the detailed performance analysis on these seals is quite minimal in literature. Therefore, in current research, CFD analysis using Ansys® is performed for this seal along with the basic labyrinth seal that is being used in rocket for cryogenic engines where fuel is stored in liquid form in low temperatures and research is extended to optimize the seal geometry by manipulating the clearance area of the seal by converging and diverging the clearance area. The results are compared with the labyrinth seal to identify the best damper seal configuration that has lower leakage, offering valuable insights for the high-speed rotating machinery applications.