Investigations of aerodynamics of Tesla bladeless microturbines

The paper presents an analysis of a Tesla bladeless turbine for a co-generating micro-power plant of heat capacity 20 kW, which operates in an organic Rankine cycle with a low-boiling medium. Numerical calculations of the flow in several Tesla turbine models are performed for a range of design parameters. Results of the investigations exhibit interesting features in the distribution of flow parameters within the turbine interdisk space. The efficiency of the Tesla turbine depends on many parameters, including pressure, temperature and velocity conditions, rotational speed of the rotor as well as on the number, diameter, distance between the disks and the state of the disk surface and, finally, on the number and arrangement of the supply nozzles. The calculated flow efficiences of the investigated Tesla turbine models show that the best obtained solutions can be competitive as compared with classical small bladed turbines.