Pressure balanced brush seal
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsWilliam Edward Adis, Bernard Arthur Couture
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A brush seal extends between static and rotary components. The brush seal includes a fence on the high pressure side, a bristle pack behind the fence, a bristle pack backing plate and a pressure plate. The backing plate includes a plurality of circumferentially and radially spaced arcuate slots arrayed in staggered relation about the brush seal segment. The pressure plate includes radially extending grooves opening toward the backing plate and intersecting each of the slots along that radius to afford a substantially uniform distribution of pressure on the downstream side of the bristle backing plate. In another embodiment, the grooves extend along the downstream faces of the bristle backing plate.
Claims9
A circumferentially extending brush seal segment between static and rotary components having high and low pressure regions on opposite sides of the seal comprising:
- a fence carried by the static component and projecting toward the rotary component;
- a plurality of bristles forming a bristle pack carried by the static component on a downstream side of the fence and cantilevered toward the rotary component with tips of the bristles engaging the rotary component;
- a pressure plate carried by the static component on a downstream side of the bristle pack;
- a bristle pack backing plate carried by the static component between the bristle pack and the pressure plate;
- and
- said bristle backing plate having a plurality of slots opening through an upstream face thereof and a plurality of grooves formed on a downstream face thereof, said grooves lying in communication with selected slots of said bristle backing plate to provide a substantially uniform pressure distribution along a downstream side of the bristle pack.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.