Effect of protrusion amount on gas ingestion of radial rim seal

In this paper, the effect of different amount of protrusion on various parameters in rotor–stator system was experimentally studied by measuring CO₂ concentration and pressure, in order to obtain the optimal protrusion amount. The parameters of different dimensionless sealing flow were measured under the condition that the annulus Reynolds number was 4.39 × 10⁵ and the rotating Reynolds number was 1.05 × 10⁶. The results show that the change of the amount of protrusions has little effect on the static pressure in the cavity, and the static pressure change near the sealing ring is almost negligible. But the total pressure and sealing efficiency increase first and then decrease with the increase of the amount of protrusion. The variation of power consumption is the same. A complex vortex structure will appear at the high radius region when the protrusion is installed. On the other hand, the protrusion can effectively reduce the minimum sealing flow of the rotor–stator cavity. Furthermore, considering the sealing efficiency and power consumption, the best range of the protrusion amount is about 36. The ratio near this range can optimally balance the alleviation of the gas ingestion and the reduction of the power consumption.