FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

OF TESLA TURBINE ALONG WITH NUMERICAL

SIMULATION
DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

GUIDED BY
PROF. SAJESH M AKASH B NAIR 16
AKSHAY S 20
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
AMALJITH P T 27
NSS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AMAL SHAJI 29
 INTRODUCTION
Tesla turbine, as patented by Nikola Tesla is made of a set of
parallel discs on the shaft. A complex boundary layer is formed when
a working fluid is injected from an outer circumference and is passed
over the discs. The working fluid is then exhausted near or at the axis
of rotation. The turbine could deliver a speed up to 35,000 RPM. The
turbine can run on any kind of fluid, including air, steam, water or oil.
There has been an increase in testing and construction of tesla turbine
since then, but the efficiency of those turbines were not even close to
Tesla’s actual patent.
In this project we are trying to fabricate a tesla turbine which is a
hybrid design from Leaman’s Design, Armstrong’s Design, Bean’s
Design, North’s Design, Rice’s Design and Hoya and Guha’s Design.
Even though Tesla turbine is promising high efficiency it is not proved
after Tesla’s design. And it is the main reason why tesla turbine is not
commercialized till now.

THE TESLA TURBINE

The tesla turbine is bladeless centripetal flow turbine patented by
Nicola tesla in 1913. Tesla turbine is also known as the boundary layer
turbine, cohesion-type turbine, and Prandtl layer turbine because it
uses the boundary layer effect and not a fluid impinging upon the
blades as in a conventional turbine.
 View of tesla turbine bladeless design
The Tesla Turbine is a relatively simple device, given the fact that it is
capable of achieving very high speeds, upwards of 35,000 RPM. A
working fluid is injected from the outer circumference and passes over
the discs, forming a complex boundary layer. The working fluid is then
exhausted near or at the axis of rotation. Powered from the shaft, the
turbine can function as centrifugal pump. The turbine can be run on
any kind of fluid, including air, steam, water, or even oil. The turbine
is also very tolerant of impurities, such as particulates or wet steam.
some distinct advantages, and while Tesla himself made some
impressive claims, but it was almost forgotten for half a century.
Warren Rice take a study on tesla turbine in 1991. In the various
testing campaigns of the 1950s and 60s, the most notable the papers
were produced by Leaman (1950), Beans (1966), Armstrong (1952)
and Rice (1965). During this time, researchers tried to replicate claims
made by Tesla regarding the turbine’s efficiency. Tesla had claimed, as
reported by Stearns (1911), that it was possible to achieve an
efficiency of 80-90%, presumably of the 2nd law efficiency. The most
efficiency that Leaman (1950) was able to get in reproducing Tesla's
patent design was 31%. This makes the turbine significantly less
efficient than other kinds of turbomachinery. As a consequence, the
Tesla Turbine has been generally discounted for use in power
generation. This extreme efficiency was achieved through a staged
turbine, though this seems not to be generally reported (Cairns, 2003).
Interest over the years, then it was left unexplored again until the
1980s. There is currently no significant practical application of the
Tesla Turbine in power generation, the pump version of this turbo
machine, known as the Tesla pump, has been used effectively in some
industries, notably pumping crude oil in deep sea wells.

The Modified Design Proposed

There are two nozzles for the patented Tesla turbine.
This results in the uneven entry of the fluid to the discs. We
used four nozzles and a fixed guide vane so that the flow of
fluid is uniformly entered. Eight discs of acrylic glass sheets of
density 1.20 g/cm3 are used. Discs are equally spaced. Each
disc is of 3mm thick and having an outer diameter of 5inch.
The discs are separated by washers.
One and half HP centrifugal pump is used for providing
the necessary head to the inlets. A venturimeter is placed in
between the pump and turbine for measuring the flow rate.
The turbine is coupled to a generator for measuring the output
power. An ammeter and a voltmeter is used for measuring the
current and voltage respectively. A rheostat is also provided
for loading the turbine. The experiment is done for various
resistances and efficiency of the turbine with and without the
guide vanes are calculated. These efficiencies are compared
and the need of guide vane is proved. The tesla turbine is
simulated in ansys fluent 18.2 (professional version). Velocity
and Pressure contours are generated.
 DESIGN AND FABRICATION

Fig. 1: Exploded view CAD model

Fig. 2: Individual parts Fig. 3: Fixed guide

vanes

Fig. 4: Fabrication of Stainless steel Discs by Laser cutting

Fig. 5: Bolting of fixed vanes Fig. 6: Casings are spot welded

Fig. 7: Nozzle Fig. 8: Final assembled turbine

Fig. 9: Coupled with

half HP pump
 CFD SIMULATION

Fig. 10: simulation geometry

Fig. 11: Mesh Structure

Fig. 12: updated Mesh Structure

Fig. 13: Pressure contour

Fig. 14: Velocity contour