Numerical modeling of spiral vibrations caused by the presence of brush seals

Clearance is of paramount importance for turbomachinery manufacturers to meet today’s aggressive power output, efficiency, and operational life goals. To minimize leakages, there are various seal types used, and new sealing concepts are in development. Because of their inherent flexibility and compliance, brush seals are capable of significantly reducing the leakage, and allow sufficient geometrical margins to accommodate design and operational variations of turbomachines. Brush seals can be assembled at very tight or zero radial clearance or even with interference on the rotor to minimize the leakage. This means that the risk of contact between the rotor and the seal bristles exists, especially in case of zero clearance or interference. If the contact occurs, a hot-spot develops on the rotor and this may cause the vibration to diverge, resulting in a synchronous instability, the so-called Newkirk effect. The objective of this paper is the development of a numerical model to analyze the dynamic behavior of real turbomachines subject to thermally-induced vibration caused by light-rub of the rotor against brush seals. The model developed in the paper is based on the work of Bachschmid et al. [1]: the dynamics is analyzed in the frequency domain using the standard rotordynamic model, whereas the heat transfer analysis, to calculate the temperature distribution and the associated thermal bow, is studied in the time domain. The contact analysis has been deeply revised, aiming at estimating suitable normal and tangential force and the friction heating generated by the contact.