Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2017, Vol. 9(1) 1–12
Ó The Author(s) 2017
Experimental study on bladeless DOI: 10.1177/1687814016686935
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
turbine using incompressible working
medium

Ruixiong Li, Huanran Wang, Erren Yao, Meng Li and Weigang Nan

Abstract
The bladeless turbine has a promising future as a new power generation system. To explore the operating characteristics
of the turbine, a bladeless turbine experimental platform with an incompressible working medium was designed and
built. The relationships among performance parameters were analysed in experiments, and studies were conducted on
the flow characteristics of the working medium inside the turbine using numerical simulation software. The causes of
entry and exit losses were analysed. The data acquired by simulation were consistent with the result of calculations using
the partial loss model developed in this article, which means that this model is capable of calculating the partial loss of a
bladeless turbine and is thus suitable for the design and optimization of bladeless turbines.

Keywords
Bladeless turbine, experiment, numerical, entry and exit losses, loss model

Date received: 4 July 2016; accepted: 5 December 2016

Academic Editor: Takahiro Tsukahara

Introduction cleaning and maintenance, a simple structure, no blade

In the high-speed development of industry, blade-type
turbines have become increasingly popular for various
applications. However, users must cope with disadvan-
tages, such as the susceptibility to corrosion and high
design requirements for long-life turbines, and poor
turbine off-design performance, the main causes of
which lie in the inevitable structural imperfections of
blade-type turbines. To solve these issues, researchers
both at home and abroad have developed new turbines,
including a type of bladeless turbine developed by
Nikola Tesla in 1913,1 whose rotation shaft was driven
by the viscous fluid force. The fluid kinetic energy and
pressure of a bladeless turbine may be converted into
kinetic energy of the rotating shaft, and the flowing
energy loss may be lower than in traditional turbines.
Thus, the disadvantages of traditional blade-type tur-
bines may overcome to a certain extent and this type of
bladeless turbines has the advantages of relatively lon-
ger life, good off-design performance, easy operation,
corrosion and low manufacturing costs.2–4 Moreover,
bladeless turbines may be put into operation in applica-
tions such as bio-fuel power generation systems, heat
recovery systems, co-generation systems, solar energy
systems and waste heat recovery systems.1,5–7
This article describes the design and construction of
an experimental bladeless turbine system using an
incompressible working medium and studies how the
performance parameters of the turbine change with
respect to one another and under what conditions the
turbine runs most efficiently through a series of experi-
ments. In this article, numerical simulation is carried
Department of Fluid Machinery and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University,
Xi’an, China
Corresponding author:
Huanran Wang, Department of Fluid Machinery and Engineering, Xi’an
Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
Email: huanran@xjtu.edu.cn

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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
out for some experimental conditions, and the main
causes of loss in the turbine are analysed. These will
have great significance for the design and optimization
of bladeless turbines using an incompressible working
medium in the future.
Previous work on bladeless turbine
Little attention was given to the bladeless turbine after
it was proposed by Tesla in 1901, but research on this
turbine took off after the 1950s. Armstrong8 set up an
experiment to study the bladeless turbine using com-
pressible gas as the working medium. There were 10
turbine disks in his design. He found an experimental
efficiency of 14%, which was vastly different from the
theoretical efficiency found by previous researchers.
Hasinger and Kehrt9 explored the fluid flow in a blade-
less turbine and noted that the efficiency could be maxi-
mized when the flow speed of the liquid between the
disks approached the rotational velocity of the disks.
However, it was found that when the relative velocity
between the working medium and the disks was very
low, the force of periphery between the disk and the
working medium was smaller and the relative flow
between disks was slower. As a result, the efficiency of
the turbine was reduced, and there are thus some prob-
lems with the conclusion about the highest efficiency.
Rice10 (1963–1965) carried out theoretical research on
the bladeless pump and bladeless compressor using air
as the working medium. He presented an experimental
study on a bladeless gas turbine and theoretically
deduced the flow of an incompressible working medium
within the bladeless turbine. However, the theoretical
model was obtained without considering the external
rotor loss. Rice and colleagues11,12 established a theore-
tical model for the flow within the turbine, carried out
an analysis using finite difference methods and con-
cluded that the inlet loss significantly impacted the effi-
cient operation of the turbine. Lawn and Rice13
reported that the theoretical highest efficiency of the
disk rotor can reach 81%, which is close to the 80%
predicted by Allen. Lemma et al.14 and Deam et al.15
conducted theoretical and experimental research on a
bladeless turbine with a disk diameter of 0.05 m and a
gaseous working medium. They found that its experi-
mental efficiency was 18%–25%. They used a one-
dimensional (1D) method to model and analyse the
flow of an incompressible working medium in a blade-
less turbine using gas as the working medium, without
considering losses. They found that the efficiency of the
turbine reached its maximum when the rotational speed
of the disk was equal to the inlet velocity of the fluid.
However, their model could not accurately predict
changes in the flow parameters of the working medium
in the turbine because they did not consider changes in
the fluid radial parameters during the process of model-
ling. Hoya and Guha16 designed a bladeless turbine
with air as the working medium and used the angular
acceleration method to calculate its energy loss and
output power. Based on a comparison with experimen-
tal results, the angular acceleration method was found
to have higher accuracy for internal calculation of the
bladeless turbine. Guha and Smiley17 analysed the
mechanism of loss in a bladeless turbine. They found
that a loss of the working medium at the inlet of the
turbine accounts for a high proportion of the overall
losses and designed a highly efficient entry nozzle.
Lampart and Je˛drzejewski18 studied the entry nozzle of
a bladeless turbine using gas as the working medium
and they obtained optimal parameters for the turbine
with the maximum efficiency. Vinha et al.19 employed a
compressible flows with three-dimensional (3D)
Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simula-
tions for high-speed applications where the optimum
revolutions per minute (RPM) for efficiency is dis-
cussed with velocity triangles and where a similar quad-
ratic trend is seen.
In conclusion, although much research has been
devoted to the compressible working medium in the
bladeless turbine, few studies have been conducted with
an incompressible working medium, and most of those
have been mainly theoretical research. However, the
working medium of many industrial turbines is an
incompressible fluid, so it is particularly significant to
investigate the working mechanism of an incompressi-
ble fluid in the bladeless turbine.
Output power and operation efficiency
We can evaluate the operation of a bladeless turbine
using an incompressible Newtonian fluid based on its
performance parameters. However, the theoretical
models derived by different researchers use different
performance parameters to evaluate turbine operation.
In addition, although the present research on bladeless
turbines focuses mainly on modelling of the flow within
disks, unified formulas for efficiency and power during
the actual operation of a turbine have not been pre-
sented. The output efficiency of a bladeless turbine
using an incompressible working medium can be calcu-
lated using the torque, rotational speed, flow and pres-
sure measured experimentally. The turbine efficiency is
the ratio of output power to input energy when the
working medium passes the bladeless turbine
p01  Dp
h= ð1Þ
p01
t exp O
hexp = ð2Þ
Qgp01
Li et al.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of working medium entering or
exiting the disks: (a) cross-sectional view of the entrance and (b)
cross-sectional view of the exit.
where h is the theoretical efficiency, hexp is the experi-
mental efficiency and p01 is the pressure head at the
inlet. The output power of the turbine can be calculated
using the output torque of the rotor and the angular
velocity
Pexp = Ot exp , Pth = Qg(p01  Dp) ð3Þ
In the literature,20–22 we find a notable divergence
between the results of theoretical calculations and the
experimental data for bladeless turbine efficiency. This
is because most researchers have not considered the loss
caused by the working medium entering and flowing
out of the turbine cavity when analysing the internal
flow within the turbine. Figure 1(a) shows the simple
cross-sectional view of the entrance when the working
medium enters the turbine. The cross-sectional area of
the flow channel expands suddenly as the fluid enters
the turbine, and shock loss occurs when the fluid
impacts the edge of the disk. However, as the thickness
of disk is small, shock loss can be neglected in the
actual analysis. Therefore, local expansion loss becomes
the major contributor when the working medium enters
the turbine cavity.
Figure 1(b) shows the simple cross-sectional view of
the exit. When the working medium flows out of the
disks, the flow state changes dramatically, thus causing
a large number of partial losses. At the same time, a
massive shock loss is produced when the fluid impacts
the edge of the disk. These two mechanisms are the
major loss sources when the working medium flows out
and can be calculated according to the principle of con-
servation of energy. Bearing loss can also degrade the
operating performance of the turbine, so we should
avoid it as much as possible in the design and machin-
ing process
3
Dp = Dpin, T + Dpout, T ð4Þ
v2in
Dpin, T = j11 ð5Þ
2g
v22  v2out p  pout
Dpout, T = + 2 ð6Þ
2g rg
 
Ain 2
j11 = 1  ð7Þ
Ar1
where v2 can be obtained by the constant mass flow of
the working medium and pout is the ambient atmo-
spheric pressure. Guha and colleagues23–25 provided
the solution for pressure in different positions within
the turbine when the bladeless turbine model is derived.
The fluid pressure can be obtained by dimensionless
number of differential pressure which can be
expressed23–25
Dpic p  p1
p0 = = ð8Þ
2 2
rO r1 rO2 r12
where p is the pressure of the working medium at a
point on the disk, p1 is the pressure at the inlet and Dpic
represents the differential pressure. O is the rotating
velocity of the disk, and p0 can be calculated according
to the derivation in the literature.23
Experimental process and analysis
In this section, changes in the performance parameters
of the bladeless turbine when using an incompressible
working medium are discussed. First, a bladeless tur-
bine is designed and manufactured for experimental
use; then, the experimental data are analysed one by
one, and the flow situation within the turbine is ana-
lysed by numerical simulation. Subsequently, the theo-
retical result is compared with the numerical simulation
result. Finally, the conversion factors for the perfor-
mance parameters of the bladeless turbine using an
incompressible working medium and the majority of
the turbine energy loss are obtained by analysis.
Experimental equipment
The main components of the experimental system are
the bladeless turbine, torque sensor, display, torque
generator, flow-meter, pressure gauge and other auxili-
ary equipment, as shown in Figure 3. The bladeless tur-
bine is primarily composed of a smooth disk, spindle,
bearing, shell and other parts. The assembly drawing
and a picture of this turbine are shown in Figure 3(c)
and Figure 3(d), respectively. The rotor is mainly com-
posed of the shaft and disk, between which a gasket is
introduced to ensure the design width and is fixed on
the shaft by screws at both ends. A cross-sectional view
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of cross-sectional view of the
turbine.
Table 1. Design parameters of bladeless turbine.
Parameters
Inlet diameter, D (mm)
Disk thickness, h (mm)
Disk spacing, b (mm)
Clearance between disk inlet and shell, l (mm)
Outer diameter of disk, d1 (mm)
Number of disks, x
Inner diameter of disk, d2i (mm)
Diameter of axle hole, d2j (mm)
of the bladeless turbine is shown in Figure 2, and the
parameters are shown in Table 1.
Figure 3(a) and (b) shows the simplified diagram of
the experimental system. The working medium flows
Figure 3. Schematic diagram of a Tesla bladeless turbine: (a) and (b) are the simplified diagram of the experimental system, (c) is
the test bed of turbine, and (d) is the bladeless turbine.
through an electromagnetic flow-meter into the blade-
less turbine on a tangent, where it dilates in the cavity
of the turbine, thereby decreasing the inner pressure.
The viscous force of the fluid then drives the disk to
rotate, and finally, the fluid flows out from the turbine.
A pressure gauge is installed before the turbine inlet,
which protects against the disturbance produced by the
working medium when it enters the turbine. The preci-
sion of the pressure gauge is chosen to be 0.02 MPa. As
shown in Figure 3(b), the bladeless turbine (1) and tor-
que sensor (2) should be on the same axis. The torque
generator (3) is composed of nuts and threaded stents,
in which the axes of the two threaded holes, torque sen-
sor and bladeless turbine are positioned in the same
horizontal plane and are vertically aligned with the axis
of the turbine, thus ensuring that the torque direction
imposed by the nut coincides with the axial direction of
the turbine to reduce the experimental error. The
instrument display (4) is connected to the torque sensor
Value by wires, so it can directly show the output shaft power,
rotational speed and torque of the bladeless turbine.
11 The precision of the display for torque and rotational
0.5
1 speed are 0.0001 N m and 0.01 r/min, respectively. The
0.5 uncertainty analysis of components is shown in
80 Appendix 2. To observe how the inlet velocity and pres-
13 sure of the working medium affect the performance of
12.5 the turbine during the experiment, the inlet conditions
16.5
such as the inlet valve opening of the turbine and the
outlet valve opening of the pump were changed. To
observe how torque and rotational speed affect perfor-
mance, the rotary depth of the nut on the torque gen-
erator was controlled to change the output torque of
the turbine and the rotor speed, and the rotary depth of
Li et al.
Figure 4. Relationship between rotor speed and efficiency of bladeless turbine under different inlet pressure conditions:
(a) Q = 0.39 kg/s, (b) Q = 0.385 kg/s, (c) Q = 0.379 kg/s, (d) Q = 0.364 kg/s, (e) Q = 0.355 kg/s and (f) Q = 0.328 kg/s.
the nuts on both ends was kept at the same level
throughout the experiment.
Experimental data and analysis
When the experiment system begins to run, the inlet
pressure of the working medium may be disturbed,
which will affect the results of the experiment.
Therefore, the system was run for a period before
beginning the formal experiment to ensure that the
experiment begins after the meter data become stable.
During the experiment, the flow of water and the
rotary depth of the nut were changed, and the readings
on the torque gauge, pressure gauge and flow-meter
were recorded and analysed one by one.
The relationship between rotor speed and experi-
ment efficiency under different inlet pressure conditions
is shown in Figure 4. Under the various pressure condi-
tions, the data points are concentrated to some degree
and present a certain regularity. Namely, as the rotor
speed increases, the turbine efficiency initially increases,
but after reaching a maximum, the efficiency starts to
decrease. The parabola created by a quadratic fit can
be used to reflect the relationship between the turbine
rotor speed and efficiency well. In other words, under a
certain inlet pressure, there exists an optimal speed that
can maximize the operational efficiency of the bladeless
turbine and ensure it works at the optimal condition.
In addition, the turbine can reach different maximum
speeds at different inlet pressures: a higher maximum
rotor speed corresponds to a higher inlet pressure. An
5
important factor in this relationship is that the working
medium has a higher rotational speed after entering the
flow channel between disks, which causes the working
medium between disks to have a higher velocity gradi-
ent. As a result, the disk rotational speed increases as
the disk shear stress increases. Moreover, the theoreti-
cal analysis in section ‘Output power and operation
efficiency’ indicates that efficiency is directly propor-
tional to power when flow and pressure head are con-
stant. Similar to efficiency, the relationship between
rotor speed and power of the turbine shows a parabolic
trend.
To observe the correlation between rotational speed
and efficiency of the bladeless turbine under different
inlet pressure conditions more clearly, all of the fitting
curves are drawn on one figure, as shown in Figure 5,
and the coefficients of each curve are listed in Table 3
of Appendix 3. In Table 3 of Appendix 3, ‘a’ is the
quadratic coefficient, ‘b’ is the monomial coefficient
and ‘c’ is a constant. It can be seen in Figure 5 that the
efficiency of the bladeless turbine increases with the
inlet pressure at a constant rotor speed, and that the fit-
ting curves are close to each other at low speed, which
means that the change in efficiency is imperceptible as
the pressure varies. When the rotor speed exceeds the
optimal speed, the change in efficiency increases with
the pressure variation, which means that the inlet pres-
sure has a marked influence on the efficiency of the bla-
deless turbine. While the turbine efficiency remains
constant, adjacent curves have little difference at low
rotational speed, which means that the influence of the
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering
Figure 5. Schematic diagram of fitting curve.
pressure on the rotor speed is not obvious; however,
the difference between curves increases at high speed,
indicating that the influence of inlet pressure is promi-
nent. Similarly, we can obtain the correlation between
rotational speed and efficiency under varying input
power. In addition, the rotor may be damaged when
operating at very high speed, so it is better not to let
the rotational speed of the turbine exceed the speed of
peak efficiency (the optimal speed) to ensure that the
rotor continues to work.
Figure 6(a) shows the data fitting curve for turbine
efficiency and torque under a given inlet pressure.
There exists an optimal torque that can maximize the
efficiency of the turbine as the relationship between
efficiency and torque takes the form of a parabola.
That operating point is the optimal point for the opera-
tion of the bladeless turbine. The torque cannot be too
high or too low for the turbine to exhibit high effi-
ciency in actual operation. Similarly, there is an opti-
mal torque that can maximize the power of the turbine.
Figure 6. (a) Experimental fitting curve of torque and efficiency when the inlet pressure is 0.26 MPa and (b) experimental fitting
curve of torque and efficiency under different inlet pressure conditions.
To guarantee the service reliability of rotor, it is better
to choose the working torque condition before the opti-
mal operation point.
Figure 6(b) shows the data fitting curve of efficiency
and torque under different inlet pressure conditions.
The coefficients of each curve are listed in Table 4
(Appendix 3). Although a lower inlet pressure obtains
higher efficiency at low torque, the turbine runs more
efficiently at higher pressure as the torque increases
and exceeds a certain value (intersection point of fitting
curve). Combined with the conclusion drawn from
Figure 6(a), the turbine should work below the points
of higher inlet pressure and before the optimal torque
to obtain higher efficiency.
Tan et al.26 conducted the actual performance analy-
sis and optimization for bladeless turbine and observed
that the efficiency of the turbine can be achieved to
10.7%. This value closes to the maximum experimental
efficiency obtained in our article. In Figure 6(b), the
relationship of torque and inlet pressure is divided into
three parts to investigate when the efficiency of the tur-
bine is constant: in part A, the output torque of the tur-
bine increases with the increase in the inlet pressure; in
part B, the relationship between them is completely
opposite and in part C, the relationship is identical to
that in part A.
Figure 7(a) shows the torque and rotor speed under
a constant pressure conditions. The rotor speed
decreases linearly as the torque increases. Based on this
correlation, the measured parameter can be calculated
from the known parameter, which could simplify the
process of data measurement in practical engineering
and experimental studies. The torque and rotational
speed data at different pressures are processed by linear
fitting. All of the coefficients are listed in Table 5
(Appendix 3): k is the monomial coefficient, and c is
the constant. From Table 5, we can see that the
Li et al.
Table 2. Rotational speed of disk edge and inlet flow velocity of fluid.
p1 (Pa) Q (kg/s) vr1 (m/s)
0.26 0.39 3.9773
0.25 0.385 3.7680
0.24 0.379 3.3490
0.23 0.364 2.8051
0.22 0.355 2.6795
0.21 0.328 2.3445
Figure 7. (a) Experimental data graph of torque and rotor speed when the inlet pressure is 0.26 MPa; (b) diagram of experimental
fitting curve and theoretical calculation curve and (c) change in inlet and outlet losses with rotor speed.
constant decreases as the pressure decreases but that
the monomial coefficient generally shows an increasing
trend. With a change in torque, the rotational speed
under low pressure does not change as much as it does
under high pressure. Figure 7(b) shows the fitting
curves for experimental and theoretical efficiencies at
different rotational speeds. The theoretical efficiency
varies in parabolic form and is higher than the experi-
mental efficiency. This is mainly because in the calcula-
tion of theoretical efficiency, the bearing loss, the shock
loss caused by the impact of fluid against the disks at
the entry and the flow loss within the turbine are not
considered. There is a small gap between theoretical
efficiency curve and the experimental efficiency curve
at low rotor speeds, which means that the losses within
the turbine are mainly the partial inlet loss and outlet
loss. In the middle of the efficiency curve, the main rea-
son for the large gap between the theoretical and
experimental data is that the flow loss within the tur-
bine is larger near the peak efficiency, which is not con-
sidered when calculating the theoretical efficiency.
Thus, the theoretical analysis can be used to find the
maximum efficiency of bladeless turbine without con-
sidering the bearing losses. In addition, it can also be
employed to predict the inlet and outlet losses.
Figure 7(c) shows how the curves of the theoretical
partial inlet loss and the output loss change with the
angular velocity under a pressure of 0.26 MPa and with
a flow rate of 0.39 kg/s. As the angular velocity changes,
7
vin (m/s) Dv = vin  vr1 (m/s)
4.1059 0.12857
4.0006 0.23260
3.8954 0.54635
3.7901 0.98500
3.7374 1.05793
3.4742 1.12973
the inlet local loss stays constant, while the output loss
has a parabolic shape and is larger than the input loss.
Therefore, reducing the output loss can significantly
improve the efficiency of the turbine when using an
incompressible working medium.
The points of highest efficiency points at different
pressure and flow conditions (the edge rotating speed of
rotor and inlet flow velocity of the fluid at the optimal
efficiency points) from Figure 4 are listed in Table 2. As
the inlet pressure decreases, Dv increases gradually, and
the optimum efficiency of turbine decreases. Higher
efficiency could be achieved when the speed of disk edge
approaches the flow velocity of the working medium. It
is mainly because that the degree of disturbance of fluid
decreases as the decreasing in relative velocity (Dv: dif-
ference in speed between fluid and the rotor speed),
resulting in the reducing of flow loss and increasing in
efficiency. However, there is no velocity gradient on the
surface of the disk while Dv is equal to 0, resulting in
the disappearing of torque.
Numerical simulation and analysis
The experiment in section ‘Experimental data and anal-
ysis’ indicates that the turbine efficiency is lower when
the working medium is water, which limits the indus-
trial application of the turbine. Thus, in this section,
the flow situation within the turbine and the generating
mechanism of flow loss are studied by numerical
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

simulation to provide a theoretical basis for perfor-

mance enhancement of the turbine in the future.27–30
In section ‘Experimental data and analysis’, the the-
oretical and experimental efficiency of the turbine are
calculated and analysed based on the assumption that
the outlet pressure is atmospheric pressure, which can-
not be used to improve and optimize the turbine in the
future. However, we can analyse the causes of turbine
loss more accurately and discover the utilization degree
of fluid energy if we replace atmospheric pressure with
the actual outlet pressure of the turbine to calculate its
efficiency
pin  pout
ha = h ð9Þ
pin  pa exp Figure 8. Comparison of turbine efficiency between simulation
and experiment.
where pa is the actual outlet pressure (Pa) and pin is the
inlet pressure (Pa).
We modelled the experimental turbine in 3D form
and divided the grid, input the divided grid into the
numerical simulation software and simulated it using a
k–e model. Mesh independence for the Tesla turbine
has been conducted, and the results show that the per-
formances of this bladeless turbine remain almost con-
stant when mesh number is greater than 4,500,000. The
‘pressure-based’ solver with the sequential solving of
the governing equations as well as the SIMPLE algo-
rithm for correction of pressure and velocity is
applied.31,32 So the mesh model of Case 3 is adopted in
this article, and the results are independent of the mesh
number.
Figure 8 shows the change in efficiency based on
atmospheric pressure and obtained from numerical Figure 9. ha , Dpin, s , Dpout, s , Dpout, T –n.
simulation and from experiment for varying rotor speed
when the inlet pressure is 0.26 MPa. The changes in effi-
ciency from simulation and from the experiment (hexp ) which shows that Dpout, T and Dpin, T can predict the
display the same trend, as shown in Figure 8. There is inlet and outlet losses of the bladeless turbine well. The
an optimal rotor speed that can maximize the opera- inlet and outlet losses of the turbine change little with
tional efficiency at a particular inlet pressure and flow. varying rotor speed, and the outlet loss reaches its min-
In addition, the efficiency obtained from the simulation imum at the optimal rotor speed. Moreover, the outlet
is higher than that from the experiment. This is mainly loss obtained from simulation is much higher than the
because the loss that occurs between the rotor and the inlet loss. Thus, the outlet loss has the largest effect on
bearing makes the operational efficiency lower than the turbine efficiency when an incompressible working
the efficiency obtained by numerical simulation. In medium is used. However, inlet loss is the dominant
Figure 8, the efficiency obtained from numerical simu- factor affecting the turbine efficiency when using a
lation approaches that from experiment, so the bearing compressible working medium.16
loss of the turbine is small in this experiment. Figure 10(a) shows how flow parameters vary with
Figure 9 shows how the curve of turbine efficiency the turbine inlet distance when the rotating speed is
ha , the actual inlet loss Dpin, s , the actual outlet loss 950 r/min. In Figure 10(a), the turbine inlet is at the
Dpout, s and the theoretical outlet loss Dpout, T change right side, and the elliptical area shows the junction of
with varying rotor speeds. The relation between ha and the inlet and cavity. It can be noted that the total and
rotor speed is a quadratic curve, but ha is much higher static pressures sharply decrease when fluid enters the
than the efficiency from both simulation and experi- disk from the inlet and, simultaneously, that the flow
ment in Figure 8. Curves of Dpout, s and Dpout, T approx- velocity of the working medium increases gradually.
imately overlap in Figure 9, and the inlet loss Dpin, s is Thus, the working medium loss at the entrance of the
similar to the loss theoretically calculated (Dpin, T ), turbine is mainly caused by the decrease in static
Li et al.
Figure 10. Q = 0.26 kg/s, n = 950 r/min: (a) pressure and flow rate at the inlet of the turbine; (b) internal pressure and flow rate of
the disk and (c) outlet turbulent kinetic energy and velocity vector diagram.
pressure. Figure 10(b) shows how flow parameters
within the disk vary with changing radial distance. In
this figure, the inlet parameters are identical with those
in Figure 10(a), the flow velocity of the working
medium presents less variation, and the total and static
pressures decrease with declining radial distance. The
output energy of the bladeless turbine rotor comes
mainly from the pressure drop; the flow velocity curve
fluctuates (0.0025–0.01 m) significantly at the outlet
channel, thus causing part of the energy loss. In addi-
tion, the elliptical area in Figure 10(b) is the junction of
the disk diameter and the outlet channel, where we find
that although the flow velocity of working medium
reduces sharply, the static pressure does not change
dramatically. The variation of flow velocity and pres-
sure lead to the loss in the disk entrance, and the for-
mer is the main factor. Figure 10(c) shows the contours
of the turbulent kinetic energy and velocity vector,
while the working medium flows from the outlet chan-
nel of the disk to the turbine exit; only 1–7 disk outlets
are shown in this figure. When the working medium is
in the turbine exit, it could form a back-flow that
would result in a flow eddy. Moreover, the turbulent
kinetic energy of the working medium is higher at the
exit channel, and the flow velocity changes sharply,
which causes massive flow loss. It can be noted from
changes in the velocity vector arrow that the working
medium at 2–5 disk outlets does not flow to the exit,
9
which causes back-flow within the disks and reduces
the operating efficiency of the turbine.
Conclusion
This article studied the operating characteristics of a
bladeless turbine by setting up a bladeless turbine
experimental platform and developed a mathematical
model corresponding to the entry and exit partial loss
inside the bladeless turbine. Numerical simulation
methods were used to further investigate the main
causes of loss inside the turbine. The article could be
employed to experimental studies in the future.
Through the above analysis, the following conclusions
were made:
1. The variation of efficiency with rotational speed
is quadratic when the entry parameters remain
constant. There is an optimum rotational speed
and torque to maximize the efficiency of the
turbine.
2. The variation of rotational speed with output
torque of the bladeless turbine is linear. Output
torque decreases as the rotational speed
increases. The rotational speed has a significant
impact on exit partial loss but little effect on
entry partial loss. The variation of exit partial
loss with rotational speed is quadratic.
10
3. The disk speed vr 1 is less than the speed of the
working medium at entry (vin ). Moreover, for a
smaller speed difference Dv, the output of tur-
bine is higher. However, Dv cannot equal 0 as
the turbine would not be able to output torque.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: The authors are grateful to the support given by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (51676151).
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Appendix 1
Notation

Q Mass flow rate Pexp Experimental power (W)

Pth Theoretical power O Angular velocity (rad/s)
t exp Experimental torque Dpin, T Theoretical inlet loss
Dpout, T Theoretical outlet loss v2 Average velocity at the exit of the disk
Ain Cross-sectional area of inlet r1 Outer radius of the disk
r2 Inner radius of the disk pin Inlet pressure of turbine
vout Average velocity at the exit of the turbine
Ar1 Cross-sectional area at the inlet of the disk

Appendix 2 density and uncertainty of electronic balance. Thus,

0.06% are obtained as the relative uncertainty of mass
The method of measurement uncertainty determination flow rate.
described in Jacobs33 and Coleman and Steele34 was
adopted. Thus, the uncertainty determination of com- Appendix 3
ponents can be obtained as following:
Table 3. Curve fit for rotation speed and efficiency.
1. Uncertainty of torque: the torque was achieved
by employing the torque-meter whose measur- p1 (MPa) a b c
ing accuracy is 0.5% full scale (FS). So, the
uncertainty of torque-meter is 0.00289 N m 0.26 28.69134 3 1028 1.65255 3 1024 0.00216
according to the error obeys uniform 0.25 29.10154 3 1028 1.61944 3 1024 0.00311
0.24 20.10145 3 1028 1.62055 3 1024 0.00319
distribution. 0.23 20.11453 3 1028 1.68442 3 1024 0.00241
2. Uncertainty of mass flow rate: electromagnetic 0.22 20.10999 3 1028 1.45242 3 1024 0.00490
flow-meter was adopted in the experiment. The 0.21 20.14157 3 1028 1.56850 3 1024 0.00370
following equation can be used to calculate the
uncertainty
Table 4. Curve fit for torque and efficiency.
N = f (x, y, z, . . . ) p1 (MPa) a b c
s
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
  2  2
∂f 2 2 ∂f 2
∂f 0.26 226.28269 2.75004 0.00770
s= sx + sy + s2z +    0.25 228.09749 2.65249 0.01033
∂x ∂y ∂z
0.24 225.84228 2.26021 0.01552
0.23 228.76288 2.33209 0.01422
where s represents the uncertainty of mass flow rate;
sx , sy and sz stand for the uncertainty of x, y and z,
respectively. The uncertainty of mass flow rate is caused
by repeatability of flow-meter, uncertainty of medium
12 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 5. Curve fit for torque and rotation speed.

p1 (MPa) k c

0.26 218201.37515 1869.82678

0.25 218263.57701 1735.89926
0.24 218053.10887 1536.32588
0.23 218762.18618 1466.77617
0.22 217611.18104 1238.63565
0.21 216802.56188 1054.84969
0.2 216751.85009 822.60994
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