A Numerical Investigation of Multi-Staged Tesla Valve

Thompson, S.M., Walters, K., Paudel, B. J., & Jamal, T. (2013). A Numerical Investigation of Multi-Staged Tesla Valve. ASME 2013 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting. Incline Village, NV: ASME. 1A, V01AT03A012. DOI:10.1115/FEDSM2013-16269.

Abstract

The Tesla valve is a passive-type check valve (fluidic diode) used for flow control/rectification in a variety of micro-/macro-channel systems. Based on flow regime and channel dimension, the optimal valve design – which maximizes valve diodicity – may be determined via computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The current investigation employs CFD to investigate and quantify the diodicity enhancement achieved through the utilization of multiple Tesla valves arranged in-series (multi-staged Tesla valve, MSTV). The effect of the number of Tesla valves on the overall MSTV diodicity is specifically investigated for various Reynolds, Prandtl and Bond numbers. The MSTV diodicity is found to increase non-linearly with number of Tesla valves. The overall MSTV diodicity was also found to be sensitive to the distance between the exit of one Tesla valve and the entrance of the adjacent Tesla valve. Non-isothermal working fluid within the MSTV is also considered and shown to have only minor effects the overall MSTV diodicity.