Abstract
The labyrinth seal is one of the widely used non-contact type mechanical seal. Current work was emphasized on the investigation of the air jet effect on the labyrinth seal. To improve the sealing capability of conventional labyrinth seal, air jet was injected against through the leakage flow. In this study, both of the numerical analysis by CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and the experimental measurement were carried out. Both of the turbulence aad the compressible flow model were introduced in CFD analysis. The sealing effect of the leakage clearance and the air jet magnitude were studied in the experiment. The reason of the enhanced sealing was explained as a reduction of effective clearance by jetting air. As a result, the air jet could reduce the effective clearance with a wide range of leakage clearance.
