Numerical modeling of supercritical carbon dioxide flow in see-through labyrinth seals

This paper presents a numerical study of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) flow in see-through labyrinth seals. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of this scenario is performed under the framework of OpenFOAM. Properties of sCO2 are implemented into OpenFOAM with a user-defined interface. A test facility was constructed to measure the leakage rate and pressure drop of sCO2 in see-through labyrinth seals. Various designs and conditions have been tested to study the flow characteristic and provide validation data for the numerical model. The primary goal is to verify the model's capability to predict leakage rate, with a secondary goal focused on using the code to optimize the seal design for sCO2. This research concludes with some guidelines for the see-through labyrinth seal optimization.