Seals for turbines and turbo machinery
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorMark William Kowalczyk
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The seal between high and low pressure regions in a turbine or turbo-machinery includes arcuate segments having a brush seal flanked on one or both sides by a plurality of beams lying adjacent to and in contact with one another. Shims separate the bristles of the brush seal from the rows of beams. The cross sectional dimension of the beams is 20-60 times the diameter of the bristles. The beams terminate short of the rotary component while the bristle tips engage the rotary component. The beams take up most of the pressure difference while the bristles take up the balance of the pressure difference across the seal.
Claims10
A pressure seal for a flow path comprising:
- a pair of plates spaced from and extending generally parallel to one another and extending in spaced generally parallel planes;
- a brush seal between said plates extending in a plane between and generally parallel to planes containing said plates and including a plurality of bristles having round cross-sectional shapes, with tips extending beyond distal ends of the plates;
- a first set of a plurality of beams of square or rectilinear cross section, stacked circumferentially one against the other between one of the plates and said brush seal, such that lateral surfaces of adjacent beams are in substantial contact, and a second set of a plurality of beams stacked circumferentially one against the other between another of the plates and brush seal, said first and second sets of beams extending beyond distal ends of said plates and in a plane generally parallel to the planes containing said plates and said brush seal and terminating short of the bristle tips, wherein said bristles have a flexibility greater than the flexibility of said first and second sets of beams, and wherein each beam of said first and second sets of beams has a cross-sectional dimension in excess of about twenty times the cross-sectional dimension of each bristle.
A pressure seal in a flow path comprising:
- a pair of plates spaced from one another carried by a stationary component and extending toward a rotary component;
- a brush seal between said plates carried by said stationary component and including a plurality of bristles having round cross-sectional shapes and extending generally toward and for engagement with the rotary component;
- a first set of a plurality of beams stacked one against the other in a circumferential direction of the pressure seal and carried by the stationary component between one of the plates and said bristles, said beams lying in a plane, with lateral surfaces of adjacent beams in substantial contact, and a second set of a plurality of beams stacked one against the other in one circumferential direction of the pressure seal and carried by the stationary component between another of the plates and the bristles, said beams of first and second sets of beams extending generally toward and terminating short of the rotary component, wherein said bristles have a flexibility greater than the flexibility of the beams, and wherein each beam of said first and second sets of beams has a cross-sectional dimension in excess of about twenty times the cross-sectional dimension of each bristle;
- and
- wherein the beams have generally rectilinear cross sections enabling the beams to be stacked side-by-side relative to one another and with flat sides thereof in contact with fiat sides of adjacent beams.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.