A revised Tesla Turbine concept for 2-phase applications

Abstract

The Tesla turbine is an original expander working on the principle of torque transmission by wall shear stress. The principle – demonstrated for air expanders at lab scale has some attractive features when applied to two-phase expanders: it is suitable for handling limited flow rates (as is the case for machines in the range from 500W to 5 kW), it can be developed to a reasonable size (rotor of 0.1 to 0.25 m diameters), with acceptable rotational speeds (which range from 500 to 10000 rpm). The original concept was revisited, designing it for two-phase operation and considering not only the rotor configuration but the whole machine. The flow model was developed using complete real fluid assumptions including several new concepts such as bladed channels for the stator, labyrinth seals, and a rotating diffuser. Preliminary design sketches are presented, and results discussed and evaluated.

Numerical assessment of a two-phase Tesla turbine: Parametric analysis

“…The two-dimensional numerical model for assessing the fluid dynamics of the two-phase Tesla turbine was developed in the EES environment [30]. It combines the single-phase model of the Tesla turbine, set in previous studies [12,20], and the two-phase homogeneous model [52], where the same velocities of the two phases (gas and liquid) are assumed ( ) [53,54] The following assumptions were considered:…”