Videos of Turbine in Action

This is trial 1. As you can see I got off to a rough start.

This is trial 4 - you can see why I'm having trouble getting a good solid start.



This is trial 8 - the best trial to date. I will need to continue refining the pressure mechanism to get better results from the turbine.



So, what's happening here? Will this is running on the boundary layer effect. Basically, the molecules of a gas or liquid will rush into the chamber. Once they hit a disk on the runner part of the molecules surface will latch onto the surface of the disk and pull it with it. As this continues to happen energy is lost and the particle/ molecule will spiral in towards the center (where the exhaust valve is). This action drags the disk along with the particles and the disks are set into motion. This is what drives the runner and why no buckets or blades are needed.

If run in reverse ( say you use energy to turn the runner) and pump in the gas or liquid in through the exhaust valve - you are now running it as a compressor/ pump. In some models the turbine is strong enough to pump mud with rocks. As a matter of fact a few oil companies have been using these as pumps since the 60's. It's a great way to pump up oil with rocks and sludge!

TESLA TURBINE!

So, as some of you may remember, around spring of last year I had a failed attempt at building a Tesla Turbine. Obviously the problem was aiming too high for a proto-type (using aluminum disks 1 ft in diameter).
This time I took a page out of the instructables book at this page. Mr. Fixits over at instructables has come up with a really clever way to build a Tesla Turbine. I became so enamored with this build so much that I decided to build my own proto-type turbine almost identically. This would allow me to test the claim on the page and at the same time investigate my own doubts about a blade-less turbine.
By the way, I know this is interrupting the FTIR table but I have to do something while the parts get shipped!

This is a side view of the turbine. Basically just cd's I don't want in the cd case they came in. Also, there are some plastic washers in there I used as spacers.

I drilled a few holes with my dremel ( not sure the of diameter) to act as an exhaust port. The holes don't span the entire height - that's actually about the extent of it. This might be a problem as I'm not properly exhausting the water or air.


This is a view from the side - just a regular cd case. If you look closely you'll see the tope 2 cd's are at an angle - this is probably due to the nozzel. I wasn't able to mount it perfectly - this creates drag which drops the RPM's. I haven't yet gotten a tachymeter (I only did this today around 11 am) so I can't tell how many RPM's I might be losing.







This is the first nozzel mechanism. I used 2 nozzels. This connects directly to the faucet. I can use the control valve to vary the pressure feed into the turbine.







This is the full assembly. The little red thing would be the second nozzel. I hot glued that into the case ( which is where the friction comes in).