The aerothermal interaction of the combustor exit flow on the first vane row has been examined at the Large Scale Turbine Rig (LSTR) at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Darmstadt, Germany). A baseline configuration of axial inflow and a variation of swirling combustor inflow have been studied. The nozzle guide vane (NGV) featured endwall cooling, airfoil film cooling and a trailing edge slot ejection as well as NGV-rotor wheel space purge flow. CO₂ is injected for coolant flow tracing. The results are compared to five hole probe (5HP) measurements. The experiments for the baseline configuration are accompanied by numerical simulations using a passive scalar tracking method to validate the results and study the propagation of the coolant flow. The endwall coolant injection is detected to influence the pressure losses in the NGV. It has an impact on the Trailing Edge (TE) coolant ejection as well. For swirling combustor inflow, increased NGV pressure losses and increased mixing of Rear Inner Discharge Nozzle (RIDN) coolant and main flow is observed. An influence of the clocking position of the swirler to the vane is detected. Additional losses within the NGV row can be assigned to the swirler by means of flow tracing.

Experiments using the auxiliary wall method and infrared thermography allow to study film cooling and heat transfer in turbomachinery research with high spatial resolution. Using heater foils and pulse width modulation, an aluminium body is heated to constant wall temperature, controlled by thermocouples. The heat flux is then determined across a low conductivity layer of Ethylene-Tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), whereby 1-D conduction is assumed. Setting the base body to several quasi-steady state wall temperatures allows to deduce adiabatic wall temperatures and heat transfer coefficients. Given a coolant and main flow with different temperature, cooling effectiveness can be calculated, using a superposition approach. Experiments in the linear cascade test rig of the Institute for Gas Turbines and Aerospace Propulsion have been performed to study the effect of hub side coolant injection on the endwall heat transfer of a turbine stator row. The quality of results is examined through extensive data analysis, accompanied by a numerical simulation of the experiment.