Film Cooling and Cold Streaks Tracking on a Fully Cooled Nozzle Guide Vane Under Representative Combustor Outflow Conditions

The pronounced nonuniform temperature distribution in the core engine flow path is a recurring problem of gas turbine engine design process. Specifically, turbine entry conditions are usually characterized by severe temperature distortions, often referred to as hot and cold streaks, ascribed to combustor burners and combustor liners cooling systems. Temperature distortions remain an issue even at the exit section of the nozzle guide vane (NGV), where additional cold streaks coming from the vane film-cooling system are injected into the flow. A precise knowledge of thermal field and its evolution is thus essential to mitigate their impact on turbine performance and lifetime. Various studies focus on the description of streaks migration through a direct investigation of the thermal field, providing an effective evaluation of the global phenomenon. As a deeper understanding is often required, experimental techniques based on the detection of tracer gases can be successfully adopted. In this study, a realistic combustor outlet swirl profile was imposed on a fully cooled NGV cascade to analyze both film-cooling behavior and cold streaks migration and redirection. A concentration probe based on the fluorescence behavior of an oxygen sensor, fully characterized in a previous work, was here employed to track the position of the film cooling flows at the NGV cascade exit plane, while the adiabatic film-cooling effectiveness was evaluated on the NGV surfaces employing the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique. Overall, the swirling structure strongly affects both the film-cooling behavior and cold streaks migration through and downstream the vane. The importance of examining the unsteady aspect is also highlighted to better estimate actual components operating temperatures. A global understanding of the occurring phenomena is therefore provided, as well as significant pieces of information that can be extremely useful for the design phases of both the NGV and the following rotor cascade.