Behaviors of a Hole-Pattern Seal With Wet-Gas

Abstract

Hole-pattern (HP) seals are widely used in centrifugal compressors to control leakage. This paper investigates the behaviors of an HP with wet-gas mixtures. The mixture consists of oil and air with inlet liquid volume fraction (LVF) up to 8%. Injecting oil into the air stream increases the leakage mass flowrate. Direct stiffness K is frequency-dependent and increases with increasing excitation frequency Ω. Injecting oil into the airflow makes this stiffening effect more pronounced. At low frequencies, increasing inlet LVF shows no appreciable impact on K; however, as Ω increases, the effects of changing LVF become more pronounced; i.e., at high frequencies, increasing LVF increases K. The effective damping Ceff value at half of the running speed is indicative of the system stability because many compressor rotors frequently show instabilities at ∼50% of the running speed. At 50% of the running speed, Ceff is positive, and it increases with increasing inlet LVF. Predictions based on San Andrés's (2011) homogenous-mixture bulk-flow model show a good agreement with test results for leakage mass flowrate, K, and the Ceff value near 50% of the running speed. When Ω = 0.5ω, the predicted value of Ceff is smaller than the measured value by ∼12.5%, giving a safe margin for the compressor design.