Theoretical and numerical investigation on the leakage characteristics of brush seals based on fluid–structure interaction

This paper investigates the leakage characteristics of brush seals including the flow field characteristic of brush seal and the effects of structural parameters on the leakage characteristic of brush seals with the consideration of bristle deflection. The flow field characteristic of brush seal was discussed based on three-dimensional (3-D) computational model of brush seal, two-way fluid–structure interaction and moving grid technique. Then the effect of structural parameters on the leakage characteristic of brush seals was investigated from theoretical and numerical simulation perspectives with the emphasis on an improved prediction formula of leakage flow rate of brush seals. As illustrated in the analysis of the leakage characteristics of brush seals, (1) the leakage with the influence of bristle deflection is closer to the results of experiment relative to that without bristle deflection, and increases with the increasing inlet/outlet pressure ratios, which validate the developed 3-D computational model with bristle deflection to be more reasonable; (2) the flow field characteristics (pressure and velocity) of brush seal are revealed reasonably; (3) with the increasing of the height of backing plate fence, the clearance of brush wire and the axial clearance between brush bristle and back plate, the leakage factor rises and then reaches a stable value when the clearance of brush is larger than 0.3 mm; moreover, (4) with the increase of brush wire diameter, the leakage factor decreases firstly and then tends to stabilization, while rapidly decreases at first, then slowly decreases, and lastly tends to a value when the bristle row number increases; (5) the reliability and accuracy of the proposed prediction equation for brush seals is validated to be high by the CFD computational results. The efforts of this paper provide a useful theoretical and numerical method to clearly understand the leakage characteristics of brush seal, which is beneficial to improve the design of brush seals.