Effects of tooth bending damage on the leakage performance and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals

Tooth bending damage resulting from an intense impact by the rotor sometimes occurs in the transient operation. To investigate the influence of after-damage clearance and tooth bending length on the leakage performance and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals, three tooth bending damages were taken into consideration, including the unbent tooth damage (abbreviated as Unbent), the partial tooth bending damage (abbreviated as Pbent) and the complete tooth bending damage (abbreviated as Cbent). The transient CFD solution was utilized to calculate the leakage flow rates and rotordynamic coefficients of labyrinth seals with clearances of 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 mm for three tooth bending damages. The obtained result shows that the Unbent tooth damage leaks least while the Pbent tooth bending damage leaks most, and an increase of 6.1% for Cbent tooth bending damage and an increase of 19.4% for Pbent tooth bending damage are discovered at the tooth clearance of 0.6 mm in comparison with the Unbent tooth damage. Compared to the Unbent tooth damage, the effective damping for Pbent tooth bending damage and Cbent tooth bending damage is lower and drops by 9.7%–33.6% and 8.5%–22.6% respectively at the tooth clearance of 0.6 mm, suggesting that Pbent tooth bending damage or Cbent tooth bending damage tends to weaken the seal stability when compared to the Unbent tooth damage.