The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 12, 2002
Filed:
Apr. 18, 2000
Emil Donald Jarczynski, Scotia, NY (US);
Sang Woo Lee, Scotia, NY (US);
General Electric Company, Schenectady, NY (US);
Abstract
A cooling system for a rotating electrical machine, such as a power generator, includes a cooling fan that serves to exhaust hot gas from an interior of the machine, a seal ring surface defining a passage for the exhausted hot gas, and a clearance seal positioned in the passage between a rotating body of the machine, such as a generator rotor, and a non-rotating body of the machine, such as a generator stator, to prevent the exhausted gas from entering an inlet to the rotating body. The seal ring surface is shaped to impart sufficient momentum to the exhausted hot gas to prevent the exhausted hot gas from leaking into the rotating body inlet. The contoured shape of the seal ring surface immediately downstream of the rotor is positioned such that the high velocity fan discharge stream is directed to flow along this surface. The high through-flow momentum of this gas stream does not allow any backward flow, thereby eliminating hot gas leakage. With this construction, the accurate and tightly controlled clearances of previous constructions are no longer required and may be greatly relaxed, providing a lower cost, more effective and higher efficiency sealing system.