tesla turbine

Hi Safeer,

This is an interesting mechanical device. I looked it up on Wikipaedia to refresh my knowledge. Here is the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine . In its simplest form I can imagine building one with cardboard disks on a dowel inside a plastic ( perhaps clear ) housing. You could drive it with air blowing from a vacuum cleaner exhaust. While it would not deliver usable power it might at least allow you to demonstrate the principal.

John

Hi Safeer,

You can get raw disk from Hard Disk, I'd recomment desktop hardisk since they tends to be bigger (3.747") and made in aluminium most of the time, you can still use old server HDD, however, they tends to be in glass/ceramic which shatters when you attempt to drill them, or the disk size is too small. So you need to check and make sure if they are in aluminium only.

Further, considering you are an undergraduate student in the mech department, short answer, it behaves like an impulse turbine. If you attempt to put high pressure without nozzle, then you're turbine won't turn.

Here is an outdated video of my tesla turbine using HDD. It has to use 100 PSI with massive pressure lost due to set up, in order to achieve 20k rpm with no load. Our current configuration allows to feed a pressure of 9-11 PSI and running above 25k RPM with actual load.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jxzXSF5ons

But yea, and don't be cheap when you will be choosing the bearing, because they gets really hot.... and you need to pick some good quality.

Thanks man it was really helpful.

I was wondering if you had any data on the tesla turbine.

I was thinking of making a small testing setup which might be used as a testing bed in the future.

Thanks once again.

thanks

your reply was really helpful

You could also use CDs.  They are cheap, light, and uniform.

It is also a possible solution if he is stuck with the raw material. In that case, don't try to run it above 20k RPM, because it just fragmented above 25k rpm, not to mention if you have to drill hole on them!

Team zefiros has put all their cad models as stp, you can download them. It is somewhere around their blog.

Zefiros Tesla Turbine

thanks man you have been of great help so far.

I am really grateful for your efforts and time.

i could do that but as many people have suggested me against it and i am willing to make a lab testing setup so i would much rather not.

But thanks any ways it was helpful. Now before building the actual thing i would make a small test bed for myself.

If you want to go with HDD platters, they have surface rugosity of 2-3 angstorm, now new HDD have smoother. Tolerancing between disk is ideal and basically perfect.

Width however, might be a variable.

Typical HDD from 20GB to 1TB have disk thickness of 0.03 0.05 and 0.07" You will find mostly 0.05 and 0.07" disk, those thin disk used to be found on QUANTUM Fireball HDD, or really old HDD. I would be willing to look from 0.010 to 0.02" steel sheet if I were you.... It's less hassle to find all those scrap.

Can you afford to do metal laser cut? You will have much more flexibility then. Last time I send a quoting for a 6" disk they cost about 3$ each.

well actually since i am thinking of making it for the university so i think i have the equipment and money covered but what i am concerned about is how to control its output and input parameters electronically so that it can become a fully testable setup.

also when a certain amount of load is applied over it, it stops running as per my calculations. this is because the load is over-coming the drag produced by the flowing fluid.Can you please suggest something regarding this.