Literature Review: Department of Mechanical Engineering

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
LITERATURE REVIEW
FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF

TESLA TURBINE ALONG WITH NUMERICAL
SIMULATION
GUIDED BY, SUBMITTED BY,

AMAL SHAJI
PROF. SAJESH M
AMALJITH PT
AKASH B NAIR
AKSHAY S
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.
Nikola Tesla
Tesla was a great inventor of his time. He is often credited for making
modern society possible, given that he is the inventor of A/C Power.
He was born in 1856 in Smijan, Austrian Empire, which is now Croatia,
and immigrated to the United States in 1884. He worked for various
people, including Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. In spite
of his inventive genius, Tesla died penniless in 1943 (O'Neill, 1944).
Tesla was notoriously distrustful of the patent system, and was known
to leave off details of his inventions as trade secrets (Tesla Universe,
2015). Tesla (1911) wrote that he believed that the turbine was one
of his “greatest inventions”.
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The various turbine designs used for this literature review are
1) Leaman’s design
2) Armstrong’s design
3) Bean’s design
4) North’s design
5) Rice’s design
6) Hoya and Guha’s design
2
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)
3
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.
4
Rice’s Design
Versions described by Rice (1991), with Rice’s version (left) with a

central exhaust, and a typical Tesla version (right) with slots in the
discs, and a central shaft, configured as a pump
Later work was done by students under Rice, but many of those works
were not available to review, including Rice’s original thesis in 1963.
However, one of Rice’s works appeared in a Nikola Tesla Symposium
in 1991, which shows an early occurrence of a hub-exhaust version.
5
HOYA AND GUHA’S DESIGN
Hoya and Guha designed and manufactured Tesla disc turbine and a
flexible test rig created to study systematically the performance of the
turbine. Experimental results for a 92mmdiameter turbine are
presented, which shows the variation of torque, output power, and
efficiency as a function of angular speed. Measurements of total
pressure, temperature, and static pressure are also taken at many
locations at the inlet, outlet, and inside the housing for an
understanding of the thermo-fluid dynamics of the machine. The
design used is principally the same as that of Rice, though with some
subtle modifications primarily around the nozzle. This design used
discs that were 92mm in diameter, and operated at a pressure of 3.9
bar. Maximum efficiency was measured at approaching 25%,
however, that value included the frictional torque within the system.
Scheme of the air injection system of the Tesla turbine.

(a) CAD model of a nozzle insert. Keys: (1) direction of entrance of the
flow, (2) direction of injection of the jet in the rotor, and (3) blockings
of the end of the nozzle slot. (b) Positions of sets of
pressure tapings with regard to the outlet of the nozzle (0◦).
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Armstrong’s Design
 Changed profile of disc

 Made disc with very tapered edges to decrease turbulence
causes as fluid entered the turbine
 Maximum speed reached with design was 9000 rpm with
efficiency 4%
7
Leaman’s Design
 1950 leaman built turbine with central exhaust
 Maximum inlet pressure 85 psig(5.8 bar)
 Maximum speed exceeded 9000 rpm
 Efficiency 8.24%
 In this design leamen had slightly different approach for affixing
disc from tesla’s original concept where exhaust was delivered
to central cavity & shaft was slotted to allow for exhaust flow
to pass
 In his design he used various surface textures of discs to see
effects
 He found smooth discs performed slightly better than rough
discs
8
Bean’s Design
 Bean’s primary investigation was on the effects of disc spacing
and on the effects of inlet pressure
 It had two inlet nozzles, with a cantilevered bearing
arrangement
 Beans design maintained &disc diameter of 6”(.152m),operated
at a pressure of 40 psig(2.76 bar),and a top speed 0f 18000 rpm
 Beans 1966 determined the efficiency of his turbine under
those conditions to 24%
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Performance comparison of various turbines
10
Objectives of the project
The objectives of this project are

1) Comparison of various modified tesla turbine models and
finding the optimum value of various elements such as no of
discs, spacing, thickness of discs etc…
2) Numerical simulation of the flow and CFD analysis using Ansys
Fluent.
3) Constructing a test rig for the testing purposes.
4) Adding our own modifications for increasing the efficiency of
the turbine.
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CONCLUSION
Despite its inefficiencies, the Tesla turbine still has several

advantages. The production costs for disks are much lower than for
blades, and the overall design is simpler and more easily
manufactured. Additionally, the turbine can be used for a variety of
fluids without extensive damage to the disks. These include mixtures
with solids, liquids, and gases, as well as viscous fluids, non-viscous
fluids, and both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. The flow of
fluid in the turbine can also be reversed into a pump, and the disks do
not suffer from cavitation issues that bladed turbines often have.
These features lend themselves well to potential uses in the
generation of power from geothermal steam and particle-laden
industrial gas. Other potential uses include blood pumps as well as in
wind turbines. Though the Tesla turbine has not yet proven to be more
effective than traditional turbines, there are still potential practical
uses.
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DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

FABRICATION AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF

GUIDED BY, SUBMITTED BY,

Tesla turbine, as patented by Nikola Tesla is made of a set of

The tesla turbine is bladeless centripetal flow turbine patented by

View of tesla turbine bladeless design

Versions described by Rice (1991), with Rice’s version (left) with a

Scheme of the air injection system of the Tesla turbine.

 Changed profile of disc

The objectives of this project are

Despite its inefficiencies, the Tesla turbine still has several

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