Most people know Nikola Tesla, the eccentric and brilliant man who arrived
in New York City in 1884, as the father of alternating current, the form
of electricity that supplies power to almost all homes and businesses. But Tesla was
a prodigious inventor who applied his genius to a wide range of practical problems.
All told, he held 272 patents in 25 countries, with 112 patents in the United States
alone. You might think that, of all this work, Tesla would have held his inventions
in electrical engineering ~ those that described a complete system of generators,
transformers, transmission lines, motor and lighting — dearest to his heart. But in
1913, Tesla received a patent for what he described as his most important
invention. That invention was a turbine, known today as the Tesla turbine, the
boundary layer turbine or the flat-disk turbine.
Interestingly, using the word "turbine" to describe Tesla's invention seems a bit
misleading. That's because most people think of a turbine as a shaft with blades —
like fan blades ~ attached to it. In fact, Webster's dictionary defines a turbine as
an engine turned by the force of gas or water on fan blades. But the Tesla turbine
doesn't have any blades. It has a series of closely packed parallel disks attached to
a shaft and arranged within a sealed chamber. When a fluid is allowed to enter the
chamber and pass between the disks, the disks turn, which in turn rotates the shaft.
This rotary motion can be used in a variety of ways, from powering pumps,
blowers and compressors to running cars and airplanes. In fact, Tesla claimed that
the turbine was the most efficient and the most simply designed rotary engine ever
designed. But the Tesla turbine has not commercialized.
The Tesla Turbine Engine
The job of any engine is to convert energy from a fuel source into mechanical
energy. Whether the natural source is air, moving water, coal or petroleum, the
input energy is a fluid. And by fluid we mean something very specific ~ it's any
substance that flows under an applied stress. Both gases and liquids, therefore, are
fluids, which can be exemplified by water. As far as an engineer is concerned,
liquid water and gaseous water, or steam, function as a fluid.
Bladed turbines had fewer moving part. The beginning of the 20th century, two
types of engines were common: bladed turbines, driven by either moving water or
steam generated from heated water, and piston engines, driven by gases produced
during the combustion of gasoline. The former is a type of rotary engine, the latter
a type of reciprocating engine. Both types of engines were complicated machines
that were difficult and time-consuming to build.
Consider a piston as an example. A piston is a cylindrical piece of metal that
moves up and down, usually inside another cylinder. In addition to the pistons and
cylinders themselves, other parts of the engine include valves, cams, bearings,
gaskets and rings. Each one of these parts represents an opportunity for failure.
And, collectively, they add to the weight and inefficiency of the engine as a
wholerts, but they presented their own problems. Most were huge pieces of
machinery with very narrow tolerances. If not built properly, blades could break or
crack. Tesla's new engine was a bladeless turbine, which would still use a fluid as
the vehicle of energy, but would be much more efficient in converting the fluid
energy into motion. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't invent the bladeless
turbine, but he took the basic concept, first patented in Europe in 1832, and made
several improvements. He refined the idea over the span of almost a decade and
actually received three patents related to the machine:
Patent number 1,061,142, "Fluid Propulsion," filed October 21, 1909,
and patented on May 6,1913
• Patent number 1,061,206, "Turbine," filed January 17, 1911, and patented on
May 6, 1913
Patent number 1,329,559, "Valvular Conduit," filed February 21, 1916,
renewed July 18, 1919, and patented on February 3, 1920
Parts of the Tesla Turbine
Compared to a piston or steam engine, the Tesla turbine is simplicity itself. In fact,
Tesla described it this way in an interview that appeared in the New York Herald
Tribune on Oct. 15, 1911: "All one needs is some disks mounted on a shaft, spaced
a little distance apart and cased so that the fluid can enter at one point and go out at
another." Clearly this is an oversimplification, but not by much. Let's take a look at
the two basic parts of the turbine ~ the rotor and the stator ~ in greater detail.
The Rotor
In a traditional turbine, the rotor is a shaft with blades attached. The Tesla turbine
does away with the blades and uses a series of disks instead. The size and number
of the disks can vary based on factors related to a particular application. Tesla's
patent paperwork doesn't define a specific number, but uses a more general
description, saying that the rotor should contain a "plurality" of disks with a
"suitable diameter." Tesla himself experimented quite a bit with the size and
number of disks.
Each disk is made with openings surrounding the shaft. These openings act as
exhaust ports through which the fluid exits. To make sure the fluid can pass freely
between the disks, metal washers are used as dividers. Again, the thickness of a
washer is not rigidly set, although the intervening spaces typically don't exceed 2
to 3 millimeters.
A threaded nut holds the disks in position on the shaft, the final piece of the rotor
assembly. Because the disks are keyed to the shaft, their rotation is transferred to
the shaft.
The Stator
The rotor assembly is housed within a cylindrical stator, or the stationary part of
the turbine. To accommodate the rotor, the diameter of the cylinder's interior
chamber must be slightly larger than the rotor disks themselves. Each end of the
stator contains a bearing for the shaft. The stator also contains one or two inlets,
into which nozzles are inserted. Tesla's original design called for two inlets, which
allowed the turbine to run either clockwise or counterclockwise.
This is the basic design. To make the turbine run, a high-pressure fluid enters the
nozzles at the stator inlets. The fluid passes between the rotor disks and causes the
rotor to spin. Eventually, the fluid exits through the exhaust ports in the center of
the turbine.
One of the great things about Tesla turbine is its simplicity. It can be built with
readily available materials, and the spacing between disks doesn't have to be
precisely controlled. It's so easy to build, in fact, that several mainstream
magazines have included complete assembly instructions using household
materials. The September 1955 issue of Popular Science featured a step-by-step
plan to build a blower using a Tesla turbine design made from cardboard!
Tesla Turbine Operation
You might wonder how the energy of a fluid can cause a metal disk to spin. After
all, if a disk is perfectly smooth and has no blades, vanes or buckets to "catch" the
fluid, logic suggests that the fluid will simply flow over the disk, leaving the disk
motionless. This, of course, is not what happens. Not only does the rotor of a Tesla
turbine spin ~ it spins rapidly.
The reason why can be found in two fundamental properties of all fluids: adhesion
and viscosity. Adhesion is the tendency of dissimilar molecules to cling together
due to attractive forces. Viscosity is the resistance of a substance to flow. These
two properties work together in the Tesla turbine to transfer energy from the fluid
to the rotor or vice versa. Here's how:
• As the fluid moves past each disk, adhesive forces cause the fluid molecules just
above the metal surface to slow down and stick.
• The molecules just above those at the surface slow down when they collide with
the molecules sticking to^the surface.- ^— = - ^ —^~" ^
• These molecules in turn slow down the flow just above them.
• The farther one moves away from the surface, the fewer the collisions affected
by the object surface.
• At the same time, viscous forces cause the molecules of the fluid to resist
separation.
• This generates a pulling force that is transmitted to the disk, causing the disk to
move in the direction of the fluid.
The thin layer of fluid that interacts with the disk surface in this way is called
the boundary layer, and the. interaction of the fluid with the solid surface is called
the boundary layer effect. As a result of this effect, the propelling fluid follows a
rapidly accelerated spiral path along the disk faces until it reaches a suitable exit.
Because the fluid moves in natural paths of least resistance, free from the
constraints and disruptive forces caused by vanes or blades, it experiences gradual
changes in velocity and direction. This means more energy is delivered to the
turbine. Indeed, Tesla claimed a turbine efficiency of 95 percent, far higher than
other turbines of the time.But the theoretical efficiency of the Tesla turbine has not
been so easily realized in production models.
6 ej )5
3. DRAWBACK IN PRIOR ART
Tesla, as well as many contemporary scientists and industrialists, believed his
new turbine to be revolutionary based on a number of attributes. It was small and
easy to manufacture. It only had one moving part. And it was reversible.
To demonstrate these benefits, Tesla had several machines built. Juilus C. Czito,
the son of Tesla's long-time machmist, built several versions. The first, built in
1906, featured eight disks, each six inches (15.2 centimeters) in diameter. The
machine weighed less than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) and developed 30
horsepower. It also revealed a deficiency that would make ongoing development of
the machine difficult. The rotor attained such high speeds ~ 35,000 revolutions per
minute (rpm) ~ that the metal disks stretched considerably, hampering efficiency.
In Tesla's final attempt to commercialize his invention, he persuaded the Allis-
Chalmers Manufacturing Company in Milwaukee to build three turbines. Two had
20 disks 18 inches in diameter and developed speeds of 12,000 and 10,000 rpm
respectively. The third had 15 disks 60 inches (1.5 meters) in diameter and was
designed to operate at 3,600 rpm, generating 675 horsepower. During the tests,
engineers from Allis-Chalmers grew concerned about, both the mechanical
efficiency of the turbines, as well as their ability to endure prolonged use. They
found that the disks had distorted to a great extent and concluded that the turbine
would have eventually failed. This, more than anything, prevented the Tesla
turbine from becoming more widely used.
4. SOLUTION TO DRAWBACK
The problem of stretching and distortion has been removed in the present invention
by providing circular and radial grooves. These grooves touches each other's and
tightly binds between two mother discs with nut and bolts. The rotor achieve a
honeycomb and rigid structure which preventing the discs from stretching,
distortion and vibration. It also allows the fluid to pass through grooves.
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5. SUMARY OF THE INVENTION
In the present invention the disc is provided with circular and radial grooves. Each
disc has circular grooves on one side and radial grooves on the other side. The
radial grooves provide a hindrance to the fluid. Fluid will create a pressure on the
radial grooves and increase the torque. Circular grooves provide a smooth passage
for the fluid. These grooves are also used as separators in this invention, in the
place of metal washers used as separators in original design of Tesla Turbine.
These disc are screwed tightly between the two disc of more thickness attached
with shaft mounted on bearings on both the sides. These two discs are now called
mother disc which made the rotor a rigid assembly which run in a stator. These
grooves save the disc against stretching and distortion so that efficiency does not
hamper.
The radial grooves provide a barrier against the motion of fluid and improve the
torque and reduces the RPM of the machine. This was a great barrier of the original
tesla turbine. All discs touch together and tightly bind between the two mother
discs.
6. STATEMENT OF THE INVENTION
In this invention we provide the radial grooves and spherical grooves in place of
washers which were used in prior TESLA TURBINE. The washers take sufficient
space even then the discs tend to stretch, deform and vibrate. If number of washers
increased the space decreased accordingly efficiency decreased. In the present
invention radial and spherical grooves make a small square so that the discs are
fixed in a rigid structure and behave as a single rotor which allows to fluid to pass
through grooves.
7. DETAIL DESCRIPTION OF INVENTION
In this invention there is no need to provide washers between the discs and hole for
nut and bolds. The discs provided radial and spherical grooves so that the space
between the two discs keeps 2-4 mm as per requirement of design. There is no hole
between the discs for nut and bolts. A hole of suitable diameter has provided at
center of the disc which is used as exhaust port. The all discs placed between two
mother discs and tight with nut and bolts. Bolts touch the disc at its outer, so that
the discs keeping their space in rotor. The power fluids move from the outer
periphery of the disc to its center. Due to viscocity of fluid the discs moves with
fluid. The fluid makes a pressure or the radial grooves and increase the torque of
turbine.
8. DETAILED DESRIPTION WITH REFERENCE TO DRAWINGS
Drawing No. 1: it depicts the. following
1) Shows the radial grooves.
2) Shows the exhaust ports.
Drawing No. 2: its depicts a section at A-A
1) Shows the radial grooves
Drawing No. 3: depicts the following
2) Exhaust port.
3) Circular grooves.
Drawing No. 4: depicts the following:
3). It shows the cross section at B-B. Showing circular grooves.
Drawing No. 5: depicts the following:
2). Exhaust port
4). Mother disc.
5). Hole for nut and bolt.
6). Disc producing power.
Drawing No. 6: depicts the following:
2). Exhaust port
4). Mother disc.
5). Hole for nut and bolt.
6). Disc producing power.
1\ Nut and bolt.

CLAIM:
I Rajvir Singh hereby claim a modified Tesla Turbine 2015 in which the discs will provide radial
grooves on one side of discs and circular grooves provided on the other side of disc .They will
work as a rotor inside a stator and produce the mechanical energy by a source of fuel.