Seal Segment Alignment Tool for Full Labyrinth Seal Assembly
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Solution Overview
Problem
Turbines, including combustion turbines, face challenges in properly aligning internal seal assemblies, often resulting in the use of inferior seal designs that lack radial interference, making it difficult to employ full labyrinth seals.
Innovation Solution
An alignment tool with a mounting flange, support leg, and jack bolt pairs is used to position and attach seal segments between an inner casing and a rotor, ensuring precise radial alignment and secure attachment using a partial annular ring and mounting fasteners.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If full labyrinth seals are used to improve sealing efficiency, then sealing performance is improved, but alignment difficulty increases making assembly impractical
Solution Approach 1:
The seal is divided into multiple individual seal segments that can be independently positioned and aligned using the alignment tool, rather than requiring alignment of a complete continuous seal structure. This allows each segment to be separately installed and adjusted to achieve proper radial alignment while maintaining the overall sealing effectiveness of a full labyrinth seal.
Solution Approach 2:
The alignment tool acts as an intermediary device that facilitates the alignment of seal segments during assembly. It provides reference surfaces and positioning mechanisms that enable precise radial alignment of seal segments relative to the rotor and inner casing, making the assembly process practical despite the complexity of achieving full labyrinth seal alignment.
2Manufacturing precision
If radial interference is introduced to improve seal positioning accuracy, then alignment precision is improved, but assembly ease deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The alignment tool is installed on the inner casing before the seal segments are positioned. It establishes predetermined alignment references and positioning features in advance, allowing seal segments to be easily aligned and installed with accurate radial positioning without requiring forceful fitting or complex adjustment procedures during assembly.
Data Source
AI summary
An alignment tool includes a mounting flange, a support leg fixedly coupled to the mounting flange and cooperating with the mounting flange to define a partial annular ring that extends in an arc between 190 degrees and 350 degrees, and a second quantity of jack bolt pairs movably coupled to the support leg, each jack bolt pair arranged to engage one of the first quantity of seal segments. A third quantity of mounting fasteners is positioned to fixedly attach the mounting flange to the inner casing.