Introduction / IssueCooling air flows in a turbine engine are an essential part of the heat and pressure management, necessary to preserve the service lifetime and control the engine regime.
Air ducts cross different pressure and temperature areas either to cool the parts or adjust pressure in the overall system. Those ducts are subjected to fluctuating temperature gradients (from 600°F (315°C) to 1000°F (537°C)) and pressure differences. Because of the temperature gradients as well as the strong vibrations from the surrounding hardware, the duct system is subjected to dilatation and movements that can reach 0.125’’ (~3 mm).
Current solutions (metal piston rings, axial C-Seal, V-Seals or bellows) offer a limited handling of the radial offset.
Our solutionWe have developed through 10 years of development a solution that combines proprietary hardware/seals design coupled with wear resistant plating.
The characteristics of this new solution are:
- Outstanding durability under dilatation & vibration in engine environment test: no wear detected & low friction (no wear at 1900°F (1040°C), 4.7 lbs force (2.1 kg force)) on Inconel rough surfaces & CoF 0.3)
- Optimized cost (50% versus regular solutions)
- Exceptional radial offset management & sealing performance (leak rate: .45 cc/min per mm of diameter)
Additional benefit:
- Low weight (40% weight reduction)
We are looking for engineers facing similar issues in order to help them solve their problems discussing on their projects in more depth and to better understand the needs that they have.
