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This paper aims to present the design of a particular non-reactive test rig for combustion swirlers and first stage turbine nozzles. The test rig is required for important experimental activities aimed at the optimization of a specific class of gas turbines.

A multi-disciplinary team performed the design process by following a tailored design approach, which has been developed for the specific case. The design outcomes allowed to build a fully functional test rig to be introduced in a test cell and then to perform preliminary experiments about the fluid dynamic behaviour of the turbine elements.

The followed design approach allowed to efficiently perform the task, by supporting the information exchange among the different subjects involved in both the conceptual and the embodiment design of the test rig. Additionally, the performed experiments allowed to achieve a final configuration that makes the test rig a valuable test case for combustor-turbine interaction studies.

The study described in this paper is focused on the design of a specific test rig, used for first validation tests. However, the achieved results (both in terms of design and test) constitutes the underpinning of the in-depth investigations to be performed in the next steps of the experimental campaign.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present paper is the first one that comprehensively describes the design activity of an experimental test rig for turbine application, also providing indications about the specific methodological procedure used to manage the process.

This paper aims to provide suggestions for the identification of potential new applications for the existing products and/or technologies.

A nine-step method has been developed for extracting information about a product or technology, processing the international patent database (IPD) and extracting useful hints for potential new applications. An academic case study has been used to perform the first application of the proposal.

A novel approach for processing IPD aimed at supporting the identification of new opportunities for exploiting existing products/technologies. The case study application shows that the proposal allows to extract potentially useful and non-obvious suggestions for new product applications.

Although some limits inevitably affect this preliminary version of the proposal, important hints for future developments have been inferred for a more comprehensive exploitation of both the firm internal knowledge and the suggestions provided by the international patent database.

The achieved results can support firms in expanding market opportunities for their products or technologies.

The proposed approach offers a new structured path for stimulating idea generation for new product applications, by exploiting product information and the cooperative patent classification.