In the typical structure of a turboshaft aero-engine, the mass flow of the cooling air in the rotor-stator cavity is controlled by the inlet seal labyrinth. This study focused on the swirl flow and heat transfer characteristics in a rotor-stator cavity with considerations of the inlet seal thermal deformation effect. A numerical framework was established by integrating conjugate heat transfer (CHT) analysis and structural finite element method (FEM) analysis to clarify the two-way aero-thermo-elasto coupling interaction among elastic deformation, leakage flow, and heat transfer. Simulation results showed that the actual hot-running clearance was non-uniform along the axial direction due to the temperature gradient and inconsistent structural stiffness. Compared with the cold-built clearance (CC), the minimum tip clearance of the actual non-uniform hot-running clearance (ANHC) was reduced by 37–40%, which caused an increase of swirl ratio at the labyrinth outlet by 5.3–6.9%, a reduction of the Nusselt number by up to 69%. The nominal uniform hot-running clearance (NUHC) was defined as the average labyrinth tip clearance. The Nusselt number of the rotating disk under the ANHC was up to 81% smaller than that under the NUHC. Finally, a clearance compensation method was proposed to increase the coolant flow and decrease the metal temperature.

This study proposes BAGWO, a novel hybrid optimization algorithm that integrates the Beetle Antennae Search algorithm (BAS) and the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) to leverage their complementary strengths while enhancing their original strategies. BAGWO introduces three key improvements: the charisma concept and its update strategy based on the sigmoid function, the local exploitation frequency update strategy driven by the cosine function, and the switching strategy for the antennae length decay rate. These improvements are rigorously validated through ablation experiments. Comprehensive evaluations on 24 benchmark functions from CEC 2005 and CEC 2017, along with eight real-world engineering problems, demonstrate that BAGWO achieves stable convergence and superior optimization performance. Extensive testing and quantitative statistical analyses confirm that BAGWO significantly outperforms competing algorithms in terms of solution accuracy and stability, highlighting its strong competitiveness and potential for practical applications in global optimization.

From a system perspective, the entropy generation of an aeroengine is directly related to the thermal efficiency when the Brayton cycle pressure ratio and maximum temperature remain constant. The lower the entropy generation of the engine is, the higher the thermal efficiency. However, the secondary air system of the engine generates a large quantity of entropy compared to the components of the main flow channel, because the irreversible losses of the internal flow and heat exchange between the air system components generate considerable entropy within the system. In this study, the theoretical method is used to build entropy generation model for different characteristics of air system components during the aerothermal process. In this basis, an integrated model of the whole engine is introduced to identify the key components for entropy generation in the system environment. The results show that the labyrinth at outlet of unloading cavity is recognized as the one that generates the most entropy in the entire aeroengine system, and the total entropy generation of the system is highly related to this component. Besides, in the system environment, entropy generation is the sum of the local entropy generated by the components and the total entropy generated by mixing of airflows in each component. High local entropy generated by components does not necessarily result in a high system entropy production, and vice versa. Therefore, when the minimum system entropy generation is the design goal, the most critical operations for entropy generation should be identified according to the corresponding sensitivity and parameter variation range, and the design should be improved accordingly.

Straight-through labyrinth seal is a simple and reliable noncontact seal structure widely used in aeroengines. During the actual operation of aeroengines, the labyrinth seal clearance might experience a nonuniform variation in the flow direction due to asymmetric structure and uneven temperature. In order to characterize the degree of nonuniformity, the nonuniformity coefficient is defined in current paper. The effect of nonuniform causes (rotor deformation or stator deformation), nonuniform type (convergent clearance or divergent clearance), and nonuniformity coefficient (nonuniformity degree) is carefully studied by numerical simulation. Comparative analysis has shown that there is no obvious difference in flow coefficient (less than 0.8% in current studies) between two nonuniform causes. As for nonuniform type, the nonuniformity impact of divergent type on the flow coefficient is more significant than that of convergent type, as a result of stronger axial inertia. Pressure distributions of teeth cavities indicate that the total pressure drop of the divergent type is more obvious than that of the convergent type when the pressure ratio is the same. With the same dimensionless minimum tip clearance, clearance nonuniformity would result in the increase of leakage flow of the straight-through labyrinth, particularly for the condition with small pressure ratio, large circumferential Mach number, and small dimensionless minimum tip clearance. When the nonuniformity coefficient is within the range of -0.1 to 0.1, the variation curves of nonuniformity impact factor versus the nonuniformity coefficient almost coincide (the maximum deviation is no more than 1.2%) under different operation conditions (Reynolds number, pressure ratio, circumferential Mach number, and dimensionless minimum tip clearance). Current work proves it that the effect of seal clearance nonuniformity on the leakage flow requires special attention for the refined design of aeroengines.

Experimental investigations and datasets in the open literature remain scarce for the fast transient response of air systems induced by sudden internal structural failures, hindering rigorous experimental validation of the governing trends associated with multiple influencing factors. To address this gap, we establish a fast transient air-system test platform and develop a step boundary simulation device based on mechanical energy storage, enabling rapid and repeatable boundary transients. The experiments demonstrate that the minimum boundary-change time is less than 6 ms, satisfying the simulation requirement for boundary transients associated with typical sudden structural failures (≤10 ms). Guided by a dimensionless analysis, we conduct fast transient cavity-venting experiments under varying outlet areas, cavity geometric parameters, and initial pressure ratios, thereby obtaining the transient response data of the cavity pressure. In parallel, we simulate the test process using a three-dimensional numerical approach validated against the experiments; by combining experimental and numerical results, we systematically analyze the effects of key factors on the fast transient response during cavity venting and elucidate the underlying mechanisms. This paper provides experimentally validated data and a reliable experimental methodology for studying fast transient response processes in air systems, and it supports the passive safety design of aero-engines.

This study investigates the evolution of axial loads in the secondary air system following shaft failure in aeroengines. It addresses a significant gap in the existing literature regarding the effects of inertial forces within the cavity, as well as the unclear mechanisms by which the geometric parameters of the flow path influence these forces. A combined approach of three-dimensional simulation and experimental validation is utilized to propose a method for analyzing the evolution of axial loads during the fast transient response process, based on changes in the Cavity Inertial Force Dominant Zone (CIDZ). The research examines both single cavities and cavity–tube combination flow paths to explore the impact of inertial forces on the axial load response process and, subsequently, the influence of flow path geometric parameters on this response. The results demonstrate that inertial forces within the cavity and the geometric parameters of the flow path significantly affect the axial load response process by influencing the intensity, phase, and minor oscillation amplitude of the axial load response at various end faces within the cavity. The variation in a single geometric parameter in this study resulted in a maximum impact exceeding 500% on the differences in axial loads at different end faces within the cavity. The study offers theoretical support for the load response analysis of the secondary air system in the context of shaft failure, serving as a foundation for safety design related to this failure mode.