General Electric Company

Mark William Kowalczyk

Norman Arnold Turnquist

William Edward Adis

Farshad Ghasripoor

Bernard Arthur Couture, Jr

David Orus Fitts

Robert James Bracken

Shorya Awtar

Frederick George Baily

Mark Edward Burnett

John Thomas Murphy

Stephen Roger Swan

Clement Gazzillo

Jeffrey Robert Simkins

Laurence Scott Duclos

Bernard Arthur Courture, Jr

Sterling Hathaway

Ron W Korzun

Jr Bernard Arthur Couture

A steam turbine comprises a steam turbine casing, a rotor, and at least one compliant plate seal assembly situated between the casing and the rotor. The compliant plate seal assembly comprises a supporting member being stationary with respect to the casing, a plurality of plate members movably mounted to the supporting member and extending towards the rotor, each plate member being inclined with respect to a rotation direction of the rotor, and an actuator for selectively exerting a pressure to retract the plate members in a direction away from the rotor.

Adaptive compliant plate seal assemblies and methods

A method and apparatus facilitates coupling a pressure vessel first mating surface to a second mating surface. The method comprises inserting a seal assembly into a groove defined in the first mating surfaces such that a portion of the seal assembly extends outwardly from the first mating surface, positioning the second mating surface in close proximity to the first mating surface such that the portion of the seal assembly extending outwardly from the first mating surface is received within a groove defined in the second mating surface, and such that the seal assembly facilitates reducing fluid leakage between the first and second mating surfaces.

Methods and apparatus to facilitate sealing high pressure joints

A shaft seal reduces leakage between a rotating shaft such as a rotor and a stator. The shaft seal or shingle seal includes a plurality of compliant-plate members attached to the stator in facing relation. The compliant-plate members define a sealing ring between the stator and the rotating shaft. Each of the compliant-plate members includes a plurality of shingles, where adjacent compliant-plate members are disposed relative to each other such that the shingles are at least partially staggered in a direction of axial leakage.

Shaft seal using shingle members

The seal between high and low pressure regions in a turbine or turbo-machinery includes arcuate segments having a brush seal flanked on one or both sides by a plurality of beams lying adjacent to and in contact with one another. Shims separate the bristles of the brush seal from the rows of beams. The cross sectional dimension of the beams is 20-60 times the diameter of the bristles. The beams terminate short of the rotary component while the bristle tips engage the rotary component. The beams take up most of the pressure difference while the bristles take up the balance of the pressure difference across the seal.

Seals for turbines and turbo machinery

Disclosed herein is a stator assembly for a steam turbine. The stator assembly includes a stacked stator section and a retention device. The stacked stator section has a plurality of adjacently disposed stator plates. The retention device retains the adjacent stator plates proximate to each other.

Stacked reaction steam turbine stator assembly

The turbine includes a diaphragm having a seal carrier mounted in opposition to seal teeth carried by the rotary component. The seal carrier includes a seal face having a coating of abradable material enabling the rotary component to abrade the material from the seal face. The seal carrier is removable from the diaphragm and is carried by an axial extension integral with or removable from the outer diaphragm ring. A spring may be interposed between the seal carrier and the stationary component.

Removable abradable seal carriers for sealing between rotary and stationary turbine components

The invention provides spray coatings to achieve circumferentially non-uniform seal clearances in turbomachines. In steam and gas turbines it is desirable to assemble the machines with elliptical seal clearances to compensate for expected casing distortion, rotordynamics or phenomena that cause circumferentially non-uniform rotor-stator rubs. The claimed invention allows the casing hardware to be fabricated round, and a spray coating is applied to the radially inner surface such that the coating thickness varies circumferentially, providing the desired non-uniform rotor-stator clearance during assembly.

Use of spray coatings to achieve non-uniform seal clearances in turbomachinery

A rotary machine includes a rotatable rotor, buckets radially mounted on and spaced apart about the rotor, a stationary stator/casing disposed about and radially outward from the rotor defining an annular gap between the casing and tips of the buckets, and an abradable seal member provided to the bucket tip portions and disposed within the annular gap such that during differential growth of the rotor and buckets relative to the casing the seal member abrades in response to contact with a base seal member provided to the stator casing. Thereby, clearance between the stator casing and bucket tips is minimized between the moving bucket tips with the stator casing.

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Amsterdam, NY, United States of America

Mark William Kowalczyk