Performance enhancement of a 100 watts class Tesla turbine

TL;DR

This study experimentally enhances the performance of a small Tesla turbine by 38% using unidirectional outlet configuration and investigates its electrical power generation capabilities, complemented by numerical analysis to optimize inlet losses and nozzle design.

Contribution

The paper presents an experimental performance enhancement of a Tesla turbine and introduces a numerical approach to optimize inlet losses and nozzle design for better efficiency.

Findings

38% performance increase with unidirectional outlet

Nozzle 3 achieves highest Mach number and uniformity

Numerical analysis helps optimize inlet and nozzle design

Abstract

Tesla turbines are an attractive but less explored area in low-power applications. This article presents an experimental investigation of a centimeter scale Tesla turbine in bi and unidirectional outlet configuration with compressed air at 6 bar. The turbine's performance is enhanced by approximately 38% for a unidirectional outlet configuration. Furthermore, we also investigate the electrical power of the turbine in a bi-directional outlet configuration by coupling the turbine with a generator. Despite achieving higher performance in unidirectional outlet configuration, we observe substantial losses at the inlet we use for the experiment. To illustrate and improve the losses, we numerically investigate the turbine inlet at a total pressure and temperature difference of 2 bar and 50 degree K, respectively. Subsequently, we design two more nozzles and compared their performance with the nozzle we used in our experiment. Our findings suggest that nozzle 3 performs the best in delivering the highest Mach no and uniformity across the slits. This observation would help optimize the nozzle suitable for the Tesla turbine.