The assessment of the calculation method for determining characteristics of one straight fin labyrinth sea

The method for the selection of a calculation scheme for the evaluation of the flow behaviour of labyrinth seal with one straight fin, against smooth wall, was presented. Experimental results were obtained from measurement data carried out on the in house, vacuum test section. The advantage of the test rig is a circular shape of the labyrinth specimen, providing similar shape to configuration operated in practise. In computational fluid dynamics study different types of mesh resolution were tested, with variable volume discretization in the area of a labyrinth fin tip. Moreover, a wide range of turbulence models basing on k-ε and k-ω, exploiting the (Reynolds Average Navier Stokes) scheme, for the flow pattern evaluation, were examined. All obtained results were compared with literature data, covering research conducted on similar configurations. The presented study shows challenges as well as the possibilities of calculation simplification and compares results obtained by means of simulations and experiment. The proposed method is characterised by excellent agreement of computational results with experiment data.