Tesla Turbine | The interesting physics behind it

The maverick engineer Nikola Tesla made his contribution in the mechanical engineering field too. Look at one of his favorite inventions — a bladeless turbine, or Tesla Turbine. The Tesla turbine had a simple, unique design, yet it was able to beat the efficiency levels of steam turbines at that time. Normal turbines are complex in design, with blades of complicated geometry and stator parts. Nikola Tesla once said the Tesla turbine is his favorite invention and he even claimed an efficiency level of 97% for this turbine. Let’s start a design journey to understand this interesting piece of technology, and towards the end we will also verify Tesla’s efficiency claim.

[ruchz]

I was part of team that built one of these for an Airforce design competition in college. We could reliably get ~94% efficiency with a closed loop superheated steam system harvesting exhaust heat from a small jet engine and got just below 96% efficiency in some ideal test cases. The main limiting factors were that the discs had to be designed to stretch uniformly without distorting at ~40k RPM and that the gaps between the disks had to be designed for an incredibly specific set of operating parameters (steam temp, pressure, velocity, etc.). The smallest variations, or while waiting for it to spin up, and we wouldn't even get close to those efficiencies. A lot of the initial designs weren't efficient enough to reach the right parameters at all.

[jackwilliams]

Man really said
"I'm limited by the technology of my time"

[someotherdude]

This animation and explanation really deserves a lot of credit.... this is really good stuff, well done!

[paulgregg]

I was a new graduate electrical engineer at Allis-Chalmers Corp. at the research division in West Allis, WI in 1961. At that time, A-C owned the Tesla turbine patent, and I worked beside a fellow mechanical engineer who had been assigned the task of running tests on a compressed air driven Tesla turbine. To load the turbine, a war surplus B-29 engine turbocharger [A-C had made these during WWII, and a few were still lying around] was shaft driven by the test Tesla turbine. A-C was one of the USA manufacturers of steam turbines at that time, and therefore the performance of the Tesla turbine was of interest. After the tests, a full report was written, but is probably lost today, as A-C went out of business in 1986. I am happy to see that others have pursued testing of the Tesla turbine, and have added to the knowledge base. As an interesting side note, Nicola Tesla himself was hired by A-C as an engineering consultant in the early 20th century as revealed in a report on file that my fellow engineer found in the A-C archive. As is well known, Tesla was rather eccentric in his habits. He could not stand to stay overnight in West Allis for some reason, spending his nights out in suburban Waukesha, and commuting by electric rail each workday to the West Allis works. That report too is probably lost.

[metaspherz]

Tesla's genius was finding solutions to problems. By doing so, he also created a few problems which, therefore, made him even more inventive.

[yashgulave]

Tesla was a genius! Not because his inventions were something that no one could make, but exactly because they were very easy to make if you knew which scientific principal i can be applied to which part of an invention.

I think that's what makes him a genius.

[Lesics]

This is a re-release of our 2 days old Tesla turbine video. The reason why this turbine is not used in large power application was not right in that video. This video has the right reason. Thank you user @Leroytirebiter for pointing it out. Here are the few uselful links which came in the last video's comment section

[maruti_rakshit]

Being a civil engineer who has studied fluid mechanics for 3 semester I am totally flabbergatsed by Tesla. This is mind blowing..

[Froggo_kek]

the simplicity of the design just makes it cooler

[davidbarr]

Finally someone fully explained why we don't use Tesla turbines in powerhouses. I work on steam turbines in the powerhouses during shutdowns. Most of the engineers I have talked with didn't even know what a Tesla turbine was, let alone why we didn't use them.

[bread]

idk why this was recommended to me, but this is quite interesting.

[poindextertunes]

Its wild knowing he sometimes had trouble distinguishing reality from the thoughts in his own head. He was basically a genius who was hallucinating in his everyday life

[ronaldroberts]

Some concrete pumps use Tesla discs because they can flow chunky materials, as long as a certain size of grain is not exceeded.

[JaredLucas]

That was an excellent way to explain boundary layer theory in a simple manner! The rest of the video is also great.

[muhammmadzainriaz]

Edison after seeing this: Edison's turbine

[cloudedarctrooper]

He created something so powerful and effective that it was too much for the materials he was using.
Nikola Tesla may have had OCD, but he was the Chad of engineering.

[IDCarlosC]

If Tesla was alive today what wonders could he come up with?
This guy was a true genius.

[jamesfrancis]

“Engineering impossibility” is another way to say “we haven’t figured it out yet”

[dynamiklp]

Imagine building something so efficient, that it breaks itself apart

[isthattrue]

I think Tesla's idea was that given sufficient materials capable of taking such forces it could achieve 97% efficiency.