General Electric Company

Hariharan Manickavasagam Sarojini

Nathan Evan McCurdy Gibson

Arnab Sen

Christopher Jon Potokar

Bikramjit Chatterjee

Rahul Anil Bidkar

Azam Mihir Thatte

Narayana Shastry

An aspirating face seal between high and low pressure regions of a turbomachine at a juncture between rotatable and non-rotatable members of turbomachine includes gas bearing rotatable and non-rotatable face surfaces. Primary and starter seal teeth and optional deflector seal tooth are mounted on seal teeth carrier on rotatable member. Non-rotatable face surface is mounted on an annular slider on the non-rotatable member. A pull-off biasing means urges the annular slider away from the rotatable member and the non-rotatable face surface away from the rotatable surface. A secondary seal is in sealing engagement with the annular slider in the low pressure region and the pull-off biasing means is located radially outwardly of the annular slider in the high pressure region. Biasing means may include coil springs within spring chambers of circumferentially spaced cartridges. Tongues extend inwardly from spring chambers into grooves in slider.

Anti-coning aspirating face seal

A seal apparatus for a rotary machine, including a plurality of sealing assembly segments surrounding a rotor element which is mounted for rotation about a longitudinal axis and has an outer surface. Each of the segments includes a shoe with one or more labyrinth teeth facing the outer surface and a shoe plate disposed downstream of the one or more labyrinth seal teeth and configured to generate an aerodynamic force between the shoe plate and the outer surface of the rotor element. The shoe is further configured to be flexible in a radial-axial plane in response to fluid film forces generated by interaction of the sealing assembly segment and the rotor element, and an axially-oriented beam spring connects the shoe to a stationary seal body.

Flexible film-riding seal

Growing community of inventors

Bengaluru, India

Hariharan Manickavasagam Sarojini