Diego Lelli

Combined Three-Dimensional
e-mail: d.lelli@surrey.ac.uk
John W. Chew
e-mail: j.chew@surrey.ac.uk
Fluids Research Centre,
University of Surrey,
Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Paul Cooper
ALSTOM Power Limited,
Newbold Road,
Rugby Warwickshire, CV2 12NH, UK
Fluid Dynamics and Mechanical
Modeling of Brush Seals
Development and application of a combined 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and
3D bristle bending model for brush seals is described. The CFD model is created using
commercial CFD mesh generation and solver software. A small gap is assumed between
all bristles in the CFD model so as to avoid meshing problems at contact points and
allow for imperfections in bristle geometry. The mechanical model is based on linear
beam bending theory and allows large numbers of bristles to be modelled with arbitrary
bristle-to-bristle contact and imported from the CFD solution. Deformed geometries may
be exported directly to the mesh generation software, allowing iterative solution of the
coupled aerodynamic/mechanical problem. 关DOI: 10.1115/1.2103093兴

1 Introduction
Brush seals are a relatively new type of aerodynamic seal for
turbomachinery applications. They have found increasing indus-
trial use in gas turbine aero and power generation engines over the
last decade.
A brush seal is a set of fine diameter fibers densely packed
between retaining and backing plates. There are three main com-
ponents: bristle pack, front plate, and backing plate 共Fig. 1兲. It is
convenient to divide the bristle pack into two regions: the over-
hanging region, as indicated, and the outer portion. The backing
plate is positioned downstream of the bristles to provide mechani-
cal support for the bristles under the differential pressure loads.
The inherent flexibility enables the seal to survive large rotor ex-
cursions, resulting from vibration, thermal, and centrifugal
growth, and rotor imbalance or eccentricity during normal opera-
tion, without sustaining appreciable permanent damage.
Several workers have confirmed that the leakage of brush seals
is considerably less 共ranging from 3 to 20 times兲 than that of
labyrinth seals when tested at the same conditions 共see, for ex-
ample, 关1–7兴兲. In addition to significant leakage reduction, the
flexible brush seals maintain stable leakage performance for
longer service while labyrinth seals suffer permanent performance
degradation due to transient rotor excursions. The main advantage
of a brush seal is the achieved minimum clearance between the
rotor surface and bristle tips. The brush seal fits the rotor surface
with a very small clearance or in interference; therefore it is re-
ferred to as a contact seal. When contact occurs, the only flow
path through the seal is via voids among bristles in the overhang-
ing region. Another characteristic feature of a brush seal is that the
bristles are inclined in the direction of rotor rotation with a typical
lay angle of 45 deg to the radial direction. The flexible bristle
bundle tolerates rotor excursions with less wear compared to other
sealing applications. The flexible bristles also close the clearance
as they wear out or after transient rotor excursion by changing
their lay angle due to inward radial flow in the bristle pack from
the radial pressure gradient. This dynamic behavior of a brush
seal, called blowdown, maintains a good leakage performance. A
good brush seal bibliography is given in the literature 关6兴.
Flow analysis of the brush seal, which is of interest in this
study, is a key element of research into seal behavior. The flow
Contributed by the International Gas Turbine Institute 共IGTI兲 of ASME for pub-
lication in the JOURNAL OF TURBOMACHINERY. Manuscript received October 1, 2004;
final manuscript received February 1, 2005. IGTI Review Chair: K. C. Hall. Paper
presented at the ASME Turbo Expo 2005: Land, Sea, and Air, Reno, NV, June 6 - 9,
2005, Paper No. GT2005-68973.
and pressure fields in close vicinity of the bristle pack and within
the bristle matrix affect the seal dynamics and performance. In
their multiple brush seals tests, O’Neill et al. 关8兴 reported bristle
instability caused by the momentum of the leakage flow hitting
the bristle pack. The bristle pack forms a complex porous struc-
ture blocking the flow path.
There are two main issues arising from the balance of forces on
the bristles. One is that the bristles get packed tighter as pressure
load pushes them against the backing plate while the inward radial
flow tends to move the bristle tips toward the rotor surface 共i.e.,
blow down兲. Blow down tends to close the clearance with the
rotor surface, yet it increases the bristle tip wear. The other issue
is the bristle stiffening effects when the aerodynamic forces can-
not overcome the internal friction within the bristle pack and with
the backing ring.
This is called bristle hangup. After transient rotor excursions or
bristle wear, the clearance should close to maintain the minimum
leakage, but may not due to “hangup” at high pressure loadings.
This introduces a hysteresis issue for increasing versus decreasing
pressure loading during operation. Additionally, swirl in the flow
approaching the seal can produce other aerodynamic forces on
bristles at the upstream face. The flow within the bristle pack is
the driving mechanism of the seal dynamics; therefore, a clear
flow representation is required.
The aim of the present work is to study the brush seal with a
computational fluid dynamics 共CFD兲 analysis, considering the full
three-dimensional 共3D兲 flow among the bristles, and a mechanical
model predicting the 3D bending behavior of bristles. The mod-
eling approach is also described in Sec. 2 with results presented in
Sec. 3. Conclusions and future work are described in Sec. 4.
2 Mathematical Modeling
2.1 Overview. In the present work, the capability to calculate
brush seal behavior is developed by combining 3D, detailed CFD,
flow modeling with a 3D mechanical model. The method used
involves iterations between CFD and mechanical models. The
three main components of the iterations are as follows:
1. Geometry definition and MESHING.
2. CFD solution for the 3D flow through the bristles.
3. Mechanical solution to obtain bristle displacements.
The iterative procedure is illustrated in Fig. 2. After the CFD
calculation is carried out, the aerodynamic forces on the bristles
are available. These are given as input to the mechanical model,
together with the “old” bristles’ configuration and a new deformed
geometry is calculated. Importing the new geometry to the mesh

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Fig. 1 Schematic of a brush seal
Fig. 2 Fluid-structure iteration procedure
generator, it is possible to then obtain a new grid to use in the next
CFD simulation. The procedure described above should be con-
tinued until convergence in the deformation is found.
In order to test the iterative procedure, a simple brush seal
configuration, was set up including a row of just five bristles, as
shown in Fig. 3. In this test case, both the mechanical and fluid
dynamics models assumed periodicity in the circumferential di-
rection. The iterative procedure is described and illustrated below
using this simple example. Further results for a simple geometry
and a real seal geometry are then given in Sec. 3.
2.2 Mechanical Model. SUBSIS 共an acronym of Surrey Uni-
versity brush seal iterative simulator兲 was used in this study. This
is an iterative code developed to predict the bending behavior of
bristles in a brush seal. The 3D method, on which the code is
based, allows a large number of bristles to be considered with
arbitrary imposed aerodynamic forces. The problem is discretized
by splitting the bristles into a number of elements, and all forces
are effectively then applied at points on the bristles. Provided
enough elements are used, accurate solutions will be produced.
Bristle-to-bristle interaction and shaft and backing ring contacts
are taken into account, as well as arbitrary initial bristle packing
and lay angles. Aerodynamic loads are applied on bristle rows to
calculate deflection in axial, circumferential, and radial directions.
However, the model currently neglects friction at the backing
plate and between the bristle rows. Brush seals are known to
exhibit strong pressure-friction coupling resulting in bristle stiff-
ening, so this will have to be addressed in future work to fully
exploit the model.
The so-called 3D-splay and inclined 3D-prop effects are in-
cluded in the model. The 3D-splay effect is illustrated by consid-
ering rotor incursions into a perfectly packed periodic brush seal
共i.e., hexagonal packing with no initial clearance between bristles
and the backing ring兲. This must cause displacements in the axial
direction, as the volume of the pack cannot be reduced further.
The inclined 3D-prop effect arises from the reaction force, acting
on a bristle, at the backing ring edge and implies that the bristles
are bent toward the rotor. It should also be noted that the mechani-
cal model uses linear beam theory and the principle of superposi-
tion to get the deflection of a given point along the bristle; this
allows faster computation but could involve inaccuracies for large
deflections. Formally, the linear approximation is valid when the
square of the derivative of bristle deflection with respect to dis-
tance along the bristle is small compared to unity. Further infor-

Fig. 3 Simple brush seal used in the present work showing the bristle
numbers

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Fig. 4 Mesh detail in the backing-ring end region „coarser
mesh… for a deformed configuration; the figure shows the small
gaps between the bristles
mation on the code is given by Guardino and Chew 关11兴. Validity
of the present calculations is discussed further in Sec. 3.2.2
2.3 Meshing. The brush seal geometry contains very high as-
pect ratio 共L / ␦ ⬵ 1200兲 channels, between the bristles. This leads
to some difficulty in keeping the mesh fine enough to capture the
flow in the small gaps between bristles while economizing on
mesh points in regions less affected by high gradients. Further
problems arise when considering the deformed geometry as it is
then not possible to perform a simple projection of a face mesh
along a straight line.
The mesh generator used in the present work is GAMBIT 关13兴.
The geometry output from the mechanical model gives a series of
vertex coordinates for each bristle. In producing this geometry the
bristle diameter is assumed to be slightly smaller 共typically
1.52 ␮m for a 76 ␮m bristle diameter兲 than the actual diameter
assumed in the bending calculation. This avoids contact between
bristles in the CFD model, and may be justified by considering
that the bristles will not be perfectly smooth and some leakage
will occur in practice, due to geometry imperfections. The vertex
data can be read into the mesh generator.
Current meshes use a mix of hexahedral and tetrahedral cells.
Results from two meshes will be presented here. The coarser mesh
is shown in Fig. 4 and has ⬃800 000 cells. The finer mesh has
⬃1 700 000 cells. Considering all the meshes used here the maxi-
mum element skewness was 0.4 and the maximum aspect ratio 18.
2.4 CFD Solution. The flow through the bristle pack has been
calculated with the FLUENT 关12兴 CFD package, using a laminar
model. The assumption of laminar flow is justified by the low
Reynolds number of the flow in the gaps between the bristles. For
example, with a gap size of 5 ␮m, velocity of 100 m / s, pressure
of 2 ⫻ 105 Pa, and temperature of 300 K, the Reynolds number is
about 67. Total pressure was specified at the inlet, static pressure
was specified at the outlet, and no-slip conditions applied on all
walls. For the axial inflow cases the flow angle was specified as
axial, otherwise the inlet “swirl” velocity was specified. An im-
plicit steady 3D solver, with a second-order upwind differencing
scheme, with the “SIMPLE” pressure-velocity coupling algo-
rithm, was used to obtain the fluid dynamics field. Once the CFD
solution was obtained, a UDF 共i.e., user defined function 关12兴兲
was used to calculate the aerodynamic forces on the bristles; more
details about this procedure will be given in Sec. 2.5.
2.5 Coupling Procedure. As described in Sec. 2.1 above, the
iterative solution procedure involves successive runs of the CFD
solver, the mesh generator, and the mechanical model. In the first
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Table 1 Brush seal parameters used in the calculations
Packing type Rectangular
Total number of bristles 5
Lay angle ⌽ 0°
Bristle length L 9.30 mm
Height of bristle overhang H 1.40 mm
Bristle diameter D 0.076 mm
Young’s modulus E 2.25⫻ 1011 N / m2
Minimum initial clearance between bristles ␦ 0.0076 mm
Number of bristle elements K 20
Initial rotor interference Zrotor 0.00 mm
Pressure load ⌬P 1.00 bar
step, the CFD solution for the initial configuration, with the un-
deformed bristles, is performed. The aerodynamic forces are ob-
tained by running a user defined function 共UDF兲 in the CFD pro-
gram. This function is programmed in the ”C” computing
language and calculates the aerodynamic forces on the bristles
from the flow solution. The output from the UDF is a distribution
of force per length along the bristles. For the mechanical problem
the bristle bending problem is discretized by defining a number of
elements along the length of each bristle and approximating all
forces on the bristle to point forces acting on the elements’ nodes.
The forces on these nodes are obtained by integrating the force
distribution over the areas corresponding to the mechanical model
element. To get the discrete force distribution, the surface of the
bristles is split into 19 elements with a finer element size where
the gradients are expected to be the largest, and coarser elsewhere.
The integration to get the forces acting on the mechanical
model nodes is done using a ”C” program that takes the discrete
force distribution as input and returns a file, containing the forces
that can be used as the input file for the mechanical model. The
integration process is completely automatic.
The deflected configuration is then calculated and output to
files, each storing the points of a bristle. These files are then used
as input for the meshing software. The geometry definition and the
meshing procedure are automated using a ”journal file” 共see Ref.
关13兴兲. Analogous procedures are also possible for other commer-
cial mesh generators. To keep this meshing procedure completely
automatic, the following approach was adopted:
• Definition of a volume containing the finer and unstructured
part of the mesh, but large enough to contain the deflected
bristles.
• Bristles’ radius reduction to avoid bristle intersections as
explained in Sec. 2.3.
3 Results
3.1 Simplified Geometry. The iterative coupling procedure
was first used to predict the 3D bending behavior of bristles in the
simple brush seal shown in Fig. 3. The parameters employed in
this work are as summarized in Table 1 unless otherwise stated.
The Young’s modulus used is for a cobalt-based alloy known as
Haynes-25 共see Ref. 关14兴兲. Incompressible flow and an axially
directed inflow is assumed in this simplified model. Each iterative
calculation in the mechanical model has been continued until the
displacement residual was much smaller than the deflection.
The axial aerodynamic forces per unit length acting on each of
the five bristles and the pressure field on the periodic plane of the
incompressible CFD solution are shown in Figs. 5 and 6. Note
that the bristle numbering starts with the most upstream bristle,
and that these results are for an undisturbed pack. Strong varia-
tions in aerodynamic force 共associated with strong flow varia-
tions兲 occur on the downstream bristles near the backing ring edge
position which almost divides the bristle pack into two separate
regions. In this case, convergence of the coupled procedure was
rapid, and the aerodynamic forces changed by no more than about
Transactions of the ASME
 Fig. 5 Forces per unit length on the five bristles. ⌬P = 1 bar.
10% from the initial undisturbed geometry calculation.
As shown by the pressure contours in Fig. 6 and velocity vec-
tors in Fig. 7, the strongest flow occurs near the backing ring
edge. In this region, there is a strong flow directed down the
backing plate and along the bristles. This is due to the compara-
tively weak resistance to flow in this direction compared to that
normal to the bristles. Not surprisingly, the peak aerodynamic
forces occur on the downstream bristle near the backing ring edge.
The strong velocities near the backing ring corner in Fig. 7 may
explain the negative relative pressures in Fig. 6. Note that assum-
ing a pressure load of 105 Pa distributed evenly over the five
bristles in the region overhanging the backing ring would give a
uniform aerodynamic force on each bristle of 1.52 N / m. It is
interesting to note that values are slightly greater than this in Fig.
5. A thorough investigation of this effect would require study of
the influence of outlet boundary conditions 共including their influ-
Fig. 6 Relative pressure „Pa… contours on the periodic plane in
the backing ring corner region
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Fig. 7 Velocity vectors colored by the velocity magnitude
„m / s…
ence on convergence of the CFD solution兲, and this has not been
undertaken here. Some reversed flow at the 共nominal兲 outlet
boundary was observed in this solution.
The bristle positions, shown in Fig. 8, did not change substan-
tially after the first iteration. Thus for this case a good solution
could be obtained without iteration. The deflections show the ex-
pected behavior. The downstream bristle 共five兲 pivots at the back-
ing ring edge and the pack compresses, taking up the initial gaps
allocated between the bristles.
A simple mesh dependency test was conducted for the CFD
model. For the same conditions on a deformed geometry, two
calculations, on meshes of ⬃800 000共coarser兲 cells and
⬃1 700 000共finer兲 cells, were carried out. Very small changes
were found, and so the coarser mesh was used for these simula-
tions.
3.2 Real Geometry.
3.2.1 Seal Specifications. A real brush seal has been investi-
gated using the coupled model. Table 2 summarizes the seal ge-
ometry, where the lay angle is defined as the angle formed by the
bristle centerline and the radial direction 共at the bristle tip兲. The
seal configuration is one from an experimental study at Oxford
University reported by Owen et al. 关9兴. To obtain periodic surfaces
along the circumferential direction 共x axis in the model兲 in the
CFD model, the geometry has been cut with two planes contain-
ing bristle centerlines. This gives a model containing five com-
plete bristles and ten half bristles. As the periodic planes cut
through the bristles, the “thickness” of the CFD domain is just
over one bristle diameter as it includes the clearance between the
bristles.
The CFD mesh generation was guided by results for the simple
geometry. Use of wedge shaped elements, rather than the purely
tetrahedral elements used for the simple geometry, allowed econo-
mies to be made on the number of cells. The final mesh included
700 000 cells. The flow model in this case is compressible.
In the mechanical model, two rows of bristles are included to
simplify the periodic boundary condition, so 20 complete bristles
were included.
3.2.2 Axial Inlet Flow. In this section, results for the real seal
geometry with axial inlet flow are presented, with pressure differ-
ences across the seal of 4, 7, and 12 bar. A converged fully
coupled solution has been completed only for the 4 bar pressure
difference case. In this case the bristle deflections changed little
after the first iteration 共as was found for the simplified geometry
considered above兲. For the remaining cases, bristle deflections
were more severe and the automatic mesh generation failed. For
JANUARY 2006, Vol. 128 / 191
 Fig. 8 Bristle centerline positions in the axial radial plane in the three iterative
steps; the position of the BR is shown on top of the graph
these cases a combined 共rather than fully coupled兲 analysis was
undertaken. In the combined model aerodynamic forces calculated
for the undisturbed bristle pack were used in the mechanical
model without iteration. As will be shown below the combined
model yielded very encouraging results.
From the CFD results, the static pressure distributions near the
overhanging region on the middle circumferential plane for the
⌬P 4 and 12 bar cases are shown in Fig. 9. Note that, with the
assumed hexagonal packing arrangement, this plane cuts through
just five bristles. It is clear from the pressure field that the region
near the bristle roots is quiescent. The strongest flow develops
close to the backing ring corner region, as for the simplified ge-
ometry. In this case with the nonzero lay angle, the gradient in the
radial pressure creates a blow-down force on the bristles, pressing
the bristle tips into the rotor.
Aerodynamic forces on the bristles are extracted from the CFD
solution and are presented in Fig. 10 for the ⌬P = 12 bar case.
These graphs show the forces per unit length used to get the point
forces for the mechanical model. B10 is the downstream bristle in
these graphs. Axial forces are positive in the streamwise direction.
Radial forces are positive when directed away from the rotor.
Circumferential forces are positive when directed in the usual di-
rection of rotor rotation. It is clear that the maximum forces occur
on the downstream bristle. The aerodynamic blow-down force is
strongest near the backing ring edge, as expected from the pres-
Table 2 Brush seal parameters
Packing type Hexagonal
Total number of bristles 10
Lay angle ⌽ 40 deg
Bristle length L 13.35 mm
Height of bristle overhang H 1.00 mm
Bristle diameter D 0.100 mm
Young’s modulus E 2.25⫻ 1011 N / m2
Minimum initial clearance between bristles ␦ 0.004 mm
Number of bristle elements K 20
Initial rotor interference Zrotor 0.00 mm
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sure distribution.
Figure 11 shows the axial deflections for the bristle centerlines
at different pressure loadings. These show the expected trends.
The aerodynamic blow-down results in a reactive force on the
rotor. Although friction is neglected in the initial estimate of the
shaft reaction, it is straightforward to correct this calculated reac-
tion to allow for friction between bristle tips and rotor, and then
estimate the rotor torque. The essential point is that the component
of reaction normal to the bristle is given by the frictionless solu-
tion and this must remain the same in the case with rotor/bristle
tip friction. This procedure does not, of course, take account of
friction with the backing ring and between bristles which can also
be important. Results from this calculation, using a friction coef-
ficient of 0.3, chosen in the middle of the range given by Aksit
关15兴, are shown in Fig. 12, which also includes Oxford Universi-
ty’s experimental data. The experimental data was obtained from
transient ”run-down” experiments which showed significant varia-
tions in torque 共see for example, Wood et al. 关10兴兲. The experi-
mental results in Fig. 12 are the maximum values reported. Given
the uncertainties, the agreement with the present model is consid-
ered very good. Leakage flow rates were also compared with ex-
perimental data and were found to be about half the measured
values. This suggests that the perfect packing and interbristle
clearance assumed in the analysis may not be fully representative.
Further discussion of this is given in Sec. 3.2.4.
The deflections considered here are well within the range of
validity of the linear bending theory 共see, for example, Stango
et al. 关16兴兲. However the model does not include “liftoff” of
bristles from the shaft surface due to axial bending. This effect
will be of order d / L times the axial deflection. However here it is
appropriate to replace the full bristle length L by the length of the
bristle overhanging the backing ring. This gives a possible liftoff
of about 10 ␮m. In practice this may be countered by the blow-
down effects due to the forces in the radial and circumferential
directions. Note also that the mechanical model does allow liftoff
or blowdown due to forces in the radial and circumferential direc-
tions.
3.2.3 Swirling Inlet Flow. The model used above was ex-
tended to include the effect of inlet swirl. Results were obtained
Transactions of the ASME
 Fig. 9 Contours of static pressure „Pa… near the overhanging
region „a… 4 bar „b… 12 bar
for the 4 bar pressure loading case with inlet swirl velocities of 50
and 150 m / s. In both cases, the inlet swirl resulted in some rela-
tively small additional aerodynamic forces on the upstream bristle
row, but had little effect on the forces on other bristles or on the
calculated bristle deflections.
3.2.4 Large Pack Effects. A preliminary analysis has been car-
ried out investigating bristle movements in a larger bristle pack.
The procedure involved the CFD forces from one row only being
repeated over the pack number of rows. This simulation was
aimed at testing if, with a larger bristle pack, the aerodynamic
forces applied could cause any asymmetry in the seal. This actu-
ally happened for the case studied 共the ⌬P 12 bar, case of Sec.
3.2.2兲, and is shown in Fig. 13, where slipping lines appeared in
the middle of the pack. These results are for a pack with ten bristle
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Fig. 10 Aerodynamic forces from the CFD calculation with
⌬P = 12 bar „a… circumferential forces „b… axial forces „c… radial
forces
rows in both the axial and circumferential directions with circum-
ferential periodicity assumed. The results indicate that for a more
detailed analysis of the seal, this model should include enough
rows to capture the asymmetric behavior which could not be re-
vealed if considering too few bristles. Such effects might also
contribute to the underprediction of seal leakage referred to in
Sec. 3.2.2, and might lead to more significant effects of inlet swirl
than were described above.
4 Conclusions
Coupled 3D CFD and mechanical simulations for a brush seal
have been demonstrated. Progress has been made on automating a
JANUARY 2006, Vol. 128 / 193
 Fig. 12 Variation of torque with pressure difference across
seal

Fig. 13 Large pack bristle tips. The dashed lines indicate the
slipping planes in the pack; ---- initial position;—last
position,—backing ring.

assumed in the model. For practical application, calibration of the

model to match measured leakage rates could be undertaken.
The mechanical model indicates that asymmetric deformations
are likely, and such effects will have to be included in a fully
representative model.

Acknowledgment
Financial support for this work from ALSTOM Power Limited
is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also wish to thank col-
Fig. 11 Bristle deflections in the axial-radial plane „a… 4 bar „b… leagues at ALSTOM, the University of Surrey, and the University
7 bar „c… 12 bar of Oxford for their technical input. This includes the brush seal
test data referred to in this report which was generated at the
University of Oxford.
fully coupled procedure, with CFD mesh generation for the de-
formed geometries being the main difficulty. The results obtained Nomenclature
give insight into brush seal behaviour and there is considerable BR ⫽ Backing ring
scope for further development and exploitation of the method, D ⫽ Diameter of bristle
particularly as the available computing power continues to im- d ⫽ Bristle deflection
prove. d* ⫽ Normalized bristle deflection 共=d / D兲
Torque predictions from the model are in good agreement with H ⫽ Backing ring overhang height
experimental data. Leakage flows appear to be underpredicted, but K ⫽ Number of bristle elements
these will be sensitive to the packing and inter-bristle clearance L ⫽ Actual bristle length

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 R ⫽ Total reaction force Life Engines,” AIAA J. 9共1兲, pp. 113–118.
关4兴 Carlile, J. A., Hendricks, R. C., and Yoder, D. A., 1993, “Brush Seal Leakage
UDF ⫽ User defined function Performance With Gaseous Working Fluids at Static and Low Rotor Speed
x , y , z ⫽ Circumferential, axial, radial direction Conditions,” ASME J. Eng. Gas Turbines Power, 115, pp. 397–403.
respectively 关5兴 Gorelov, G. M., Rezinik, V. E., and Tsibizov, V. I., 1988, “Experimental Study
of Brush Seal Flow Characteristics and Comparison With a Labyrinth Seal,”
Greek Izvestitiya VUZ, Aviatsionnaya Tekhnika, 31共4兲, pp. 43–46 共Allerton Press兲.
␮ ⫽ Friction coefficient 关6兴 Chupp, R. E., Aksit, M. F., Ghasripoor, F., Turnquist, N. A., and Demiroglu,
M., 2001, “Advanced Seals for Industrial Turbine Applications,” AIAA Paper
␦ ⫽ Initial gap clearance between bristle and back- No. 2001-3626.
ing ring 关7兴 Dinc, S., et al., 2002, “Fundamental Design Issues of Brush Seals for Industrial
⌽ ⫽ Lay angle 共=0 deg for radially aligned bristle兲 Applications,” ASME J. Turbomach., 124, pp. 293–300.
关8兴 O’Neill, A. T., Hogg, S. I., Withers, P. A., Turner, M. T., and Jones, T. V.,
⌬P ⫽ Pressure difference across seal 1997, “Multiple Brush Seals in Series,” ASME Paper No. 97-GT-194.
关9兴 Owen, A., K., Jones, T. V., Guo, S., M., and Hogg, S., 2003, An Experimental
Subscripts and Theoretical Study of Brush Seal and Shaft Thermal Interaction,” ASME
ax ⫽ Axial Paper No. GT2003-38276.
circ, c ⫽ Circumferential 关10兴 Wood P. E., and Jones T. V., 1997, “A Test Facility for the Measurement of
n ⫽ Normal to the bristle surface Torques at the Shaft to Seal Interface in Brush Seal,” ASME Paper No. 97-
GT-184.
rotor, r ⫽ Rotor surface 关11兴 Guardino, C., and Chew, J. W., 2004, “Numerical Simulation of 3D Bristle
Bending in Brush Seals,” ASME Paper No. GT2004-53176.
关12兴 Fluent 6.1 Documentation, FLUENT Package, Fluent Inc., Lebanon, NH.
References 关13兴 Gambit 2.1.2 Documentation, FLUENT Package, Fluent Inc., Lebanon, NH.
关1兴 Ferguson, J. G., 1988, “Brushes as High Performance Gas Turbine Seals,” 关14兴 http://www.alloywire.com/haynes25.htm
ASME Paper No. 88-GT-182. 关15兴 Aksit, M. F., 2003, “Analysis of Brush Seal Bristle Stresses With Pressure-
关2兴 Chupp, R. E., and Dowler, C. A., 1993, “Performance Characteristics of Brush Friction Coupling,” ASME Paper No. GT2003-38276.
Seals for Limited-Life Engines,” ASME J. Eng. Gas Turbines Power, 115, pp. 关16兴 Stango, R. J., Zhao, H., and Shia, C. Y., 2003, “Analysis of Contact Mechanics
390–396. for Rotor-Britle Interference of Brush Seal,” ASME J. Tribol., 125, pp. 414–
关3兴 Chupp, R. E., and Nelson, P., 1993, “Evaluation of Brush Seals for Limited- 421.

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