Flow and Heat Transfer Analysis of an Inlet Guide Vane with Closed-loop Steam Cooling

This paper aims to numerically investigate the overall cooling efficiency of a closed-loop steam cooling scheme with 3 separated cooling circuits designed for an inlet guide vane. Conjugate heat transfer simulation is carried out with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model. The result indicates that most regions of vane surface are well cooled, but some of trailing edge region and the turning corner parts at mid-chord region suffer high temperature. The flow and heat transfer in each cooling circuit are analyzed in detail, and the key problem of the current cooling scheme design is found.