An investigation of ingress for an 'air-cooled' shrouded rotating disk system with radial-clearance seals

The quest for improved performance has led to great interest in the study of disk sealing and cooling air systems of gas turbines. The disk cooling air must not only remove the heat conducted in the disk from the blades but must also prevent the ingress of hot gas into the cavity between the disk and the stator. The present investigation is concerned with the study of several different rotor-stator seals with radial clearances between cylindrical shrouds on both the rotor and the stator. The tests were conducted in the absence of an external axial flow, which occurs in an actual gas turbine. Flow visualization and pressure measurements were used to study the performance of the radial-clearance seals.