Comparison of methods for the determination of Tesla turbine performance

A numerical and experimental investigation of the Tesla turbine is presented in the paper. The experiment is conducted for various inlet pressure and load. The roughness of the rotor disc is determined as it is a key factor to obtain high turbine efficiency and power. The numerical investigations are performed for the same conditions as in the experiment. The computational results are compared with the analytical model. Comparison of performance characteristics shows a relatively good agreement between the experiment and CFD. The analytical model overestimates distributions of pressure and circumferential velocities, although the predicted power is on the similar level as in the experiment and CFD.