The Tesla Valve: One Way Flow With No Moving Parts

http://blog.makezine.com/2012/01/05/the-tesla-valve-one-way-flow-with-no-moving-parts/

by iamwil • 14 years ago

405 66 14 years ago

blog.makezine.com

megaman8212• 14 years ago

How Telsa came up with most the things he did are beyond me. I have always thought he was the smartest man that has ever lived.

loceng2• 14 years ago

He came from the future to try to prevent us from destroying our planet with pollution and global warming.

samstave2• 14 years ago

As much as I love Tesla, if this is true - he has failed :(

loceng2• 14 years ago

No sense of humour here on HN?

backprojection2• 14 years ago

I have the feeling that, to an engineer/researcher who is well versed in fluid-dynamics, this sort of thing wont seem as ingenious - my guess is that it's at the analogous level of a waveguide.

No doubt that Tesla was a bright person though.

Arjuna2• 14 years ago

"[...] my guess is that it's at the analogous level of a waveguide."

In the field of fluid dynamics, it is referred to as a check valve. [1][2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_valve

[2] http://www.spiraxsarco.com/resources/steam-engineering-tutor...

megaman8212• 14 years ago

I wasn't speaking to this specifically, but rather induction motors and wireless power among other things.

JoeAltmaier• 14 years ago

And Shakespeare just strung a bunch of cliches together, and Newton just wrote down what everybody was thinking.

Easy to dismiss genius - it all seems so obvious now!

learc83• 14 years ago

From the video it looked like there was still some airflow in the reverse direction.

blahedo• 14 years ago

Yes, it seems better as a technique to introduce bias to flow than to restrict it altogether---valve-like, but not exactly a valve. Sufficient for a lot of valve applications, though, and the lack of moving parts is reeeeeally nice.

backprojection2• 14 years ago

Looks like the shape tries to maximize turbulence in one direction, and minimize it in the other.

Probably it would be an effective mixing device too.

damoncali• 14 years ago

From the comments:

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube Another simple yet fascinating device

imperator14• 14 years ago

I find that device fascinating too. That's why I designed the 3D printed Tesla Valve in the article. Things with no moving parts are amazing. Especially the esoteric ones that seem forgotten by time because other technologies progressed ahead of them.

mikeknoop2• 14 years ago

Is the unidirectional flow property dependent on the pressure gradient at both ends? It seems that at low pressure differences you could still get flow in the reverse direction. Yet, at high pressures I imagine you would see some leakage, too. Does it only work for medium pressures?

imperator14• 14 years ago

In will work in many regimes. In the microfluidic literature, the valve is judged by its diodicity. Different flow rates, sizes, and viscosity, results in different geometry for the tesla valve.

georgieporgie• 14 years ago

If you haven't read Tesla's autobiography[1], I highly recommend it.

http://www.tfcbooks.com/special/my_inventions_index.htm

[1] I'm a bit confused as to whether it was genuinely an autobiography, or a compilation of articles. Either way, it was interesting to read, though very light on technical details.

acqq• 14 years ago

It is a collection of articles for the "Electrical Experimenter" magazine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_Experimenter The articles were written by Tesla and they are autobiographical.

There are also some versions on the internet which include fake sentences inserted later by some religious zealot mentioning "God, Divine Being." Take care not to link to those.

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

That's pretty cool. The curved side channel actually pushes the main flow into the next side channel.

I wonder if a fractal version of this would work better. And what if there were side channels on the top and bottom too.

Of course, this will always pass some fluid. but if you need a complete shutoff valve, combining it with the tesla valve would allow you to use a smaller one and makes its failure less traumatic.

imperator14• 14 years ago

In regard to a fractal design being more efficient, you have to check out these topology optimized valves. They are really beautiful and peculiar, and have many branching channels to optimize their efficiency. http://www.senlin41.org/topology-optimization-of-tesla-type-...

stretchwithme2• 14 years ago

nice. thanks!

imperator14• 14 years ago

I'm the one who made that 3D printed Tesla Valve shown in the pictures and video. I'm currently inventing a jet engine with no moving parts. If anyone wants to ask questions about the valve's workings or about Tesla, go right ahead.

recusancy• 14 years ago

You should do an AMA on reddit.

imperator14• 14 years ago

Someone did a TIL on reddit and I popped in to answer questions there, too. http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/obyxj/til_tha...

apu• 14 years ago

I'm currently inventing a jet engine with no moving parts

A ramjet?

imperator14• 14 years ago

My jet engine is unique. There are actually many no-moving-parts jets. Each with different drawbacks. A ramjet cannot start from a static position, mine can start from a static position.

If anyone is interested, there are some very cool no-moving-parts jets that aren't as well known as ramjets: The lockwood hiller pulsejet is a pulsejet that doesn't need reed valves. http://aardvark.co.nz/pjet/valveless.htm

The Gluhareff Pressure jet is also a neat example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluhareff_Pressure_Jet

marshray4• 14 years ago

How small would you have to make one that could check the airflow caused by sound waves?

Could you make an array of them oriented perpendicular to the plane, like a sheet?

Could you make it light enough to float on sound?

What kinds of things might it be good for? Sound dampening?

Could a paddlewheel configuration extract energy from air or liquid flow in any direction?

imperator14• 14 years ago

The current use for Tesla Valves is in microfluidics. On the macro level, people generally use one way valves that have moving parts. To harness the flow of a fluid being acoustically pumped, I don't know what it would take.

You could make an array of them perpendicular to a plane. Perhaps, by etching them into silicon. On a macro scale, you could machine them with a CNC machine, or even with hand tools depending on your tolerances.

For sound, you energy density is rather low, so the material you wish to propel would have to be incredibly light. And you would probably have better luck trying to lift a plate of some super light material. The Tesla Valve is most useful as a device where you want to check the flow from moving one way.

Anywhere, where having a moving part is a pain in the butt, and you want a more robust system. When you're etching things into silicon, generally, you want to avoid have to make lots of tiny micromechanisms.

As a paddlewheel, it would probably not make sense to use the Tesla Valve. Turbines are well understood. If you want to make rotary motion, that's the way to go.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

Very cool, it would be interesting to build one (large) which would be wave pumped. You could cast it out of concrete I suspect. The idea being that waves would push into the end and then the flow back out would be self resisted, this would allow the wave energy to pump seawater up a bit. Then you provide a drain which runs through a micro-hydro station.

Would be fascinating to see what rate of wave action you would need to keep the flow going up hill.

On a pure art level building a pool on the beach that was filled with wave action like this would be kind of fun.

imperator14• 14 years ago

That's a good idea. I've seen some of the wave generator concepts out there, and everyone seems to be trying different concepts for harnessing those oscillations. No one has it nailed down yet. One of the most intriguing mechanisms I've seen is this oscillating submersible wing: http://liquidr.com/technology/wave-glider-concept/

akkartik• 14 years ago

It's a cool idea, but you might want to just build it with a traditional valve. I think the Tesla valve relies on moving fluid. If you just submerged it half way water would leak out in the wrong direction. So it won't work well for applications in the style of Maxwell's Demon.

aidenn0• 14 years ago

Have you made a rotationally symmetrical version of that flow, or are you going to try to make flattened jet? The biggest problem I've seen with valveless jets like this are that it works great in 2d, but rectangular cross-sections don't do well under high-pressures.

imperator14• 14 years ago

I have done lots of experiments with 3D versions of this valve. I even did some with a traveling rotation along the axis, so that it looked like a helix. Unfortunately, those were duds, though the looked beautiful.

My current jet engine work does not include a Tesla Valve, though much of it is inspired by it. When I began, I imagined using a pulse jet, and attaching an axialy rotated tesla valve to the front of it, in order to replace the reed valves. I eventually moved away from pulsed combustion though. Too noisy and not the pressure levels I wanted.

z92• 14 years ago

If you hold the valve vertically and pour water through the wrong side, water will eventually start to fall from the other side when all those cavities inside the valve get overflown --- is that correct?

iamwil• 14 years ago

Weird. I'm the one that submitted the story. You joined HN one day after I did.

samstave2• 14 years ago

After seeing the pic of the valve you 3D printed, it would seem that making a jig for a router to cut that patern out would be better than printing the valve itself.

And seems like routing one out of aluminum on a CNC would be good as well.

Tycho• 14 years ago

Can someone post a link to the desktop version? Site is unreadable on iPad.

mdonahoe• 14 years ago

Scroll down and turn off The mobile version of the Wordpress theme.

meric• 14 years ago

Just imagine the day we get cheap 3D printers. We see this article on the internet on the Tesla Valve and want to try it out ourselves, so we download the blueprint and send it to our personal printer, which prints a copy of the Tesla Valve and then we play with it ourselves. I am guessing there are so many (expired) patents out there that, just like this one, can be converted to a blue print and everyone would get to experiment with it, instead of only large companies with enough cash to customise expensive equipment for it.

imperator14• 14 years ago

If you are still waiting for that day, you can get the valve 3D printed now from my shop: http://www.shapeways.com/model/292339/tesla_valve.html

And if you already have a 3D printer, you can get the files free here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16919

thusly• 14 years ago

My late-night reading currently consists of the book "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla; Biography of a Genius" by Marc J. Seifer. For anyone looking to learn more about the man, this seems to be the most comprehensive biography available. While only half through it so far, it's been an enjoyable and enlightening read.

The author's occasional dry humour is also quite welcome. Here's a sample: "Due to his meager funds and general inability to budget himself, Tesla had but one suit, which had withered from use. It was the time of a religious festival, and Szigeti inquired what Tesla would be wearing. Stuck for an answer, the youthful inventor came upon the clever idea of turning his suit inside out, planning thereby to show up with a seemingly new set of clothes. All night was spent tailoring and ironing. But when one starts with a wrong premise, no amount of patching can right the problem. The outfit looked ridiculous, and Tesla stayed home instead."

salemh• 14 years ago

His own biography (somewhat stilted writing, the constant "I" self-referrals, but, dense and very interesting):

My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla http://www.amazon.com/My-Inventions-Autobiography-Nikola-Tes...

He had his own vision of a "singularity" basically interconnectedness of all human kind across earth to "rid ourselves" of war. Free energy, etc. Held full models of his machines and ideas in his head (spatially fascinating) before construction.

Several nervous of mental breakdowns when over-working, strange debilitating flashes of light, etc. Probably some brain chemistry idiosyncrasies.

bane2• 14 years ago

My late-night reading currently consists of the book "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla

I'd recommend "The Prestige" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/

which has a fascinating portrayal of Tesla as a kind of mad techno Wizard (played by David Bowie of all people).

thret• 14 years ago

The Prestige is complete fiction that merely uses his name because he is recognisable as a practical genius.

rbanffy• 14 years ago

Does it work with incompressible fluids? Can someone test one with water?

imperator14• 14 years ago

Yes. It also works with incompressible flows. I have yet to give mine a test with water. I want to build an acrylic window for it first, and ink the incoming water.

kragen• 14 years ago

The whole field of fluidics is fascinating, including entire digital logic families that operate at kHz rates with no moving parts and no electricity, just air. I wrote a kragen-tol post about this in 2002 http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2002-April/0..., when Air Logic still sold actual logic gates that ran on air, but since then Google Books has archived this June 1967 Popular Mechanics article, "How They've Taught a Stream of Air to Think": http://books.google.com.ar/books?id=jSEDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA11..., and of course fluidics has become practically very important for on-chip microarrays. There's also a Wikipedia article now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics

gjm11• 14 years ago

See also: http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/glitch.html#crunchly73-06-04 and follow the next-cartoon chain from there. I particularly like http://catb.org/jargon/html/N/number-crunching.html#crunchly... .

mrstinton• 14 years ago

That's very elegant. It's amazing (and a little terrifying) to think that he may very well have been able to mentally visualize the fluid dynamics to some extent. It's not like he was consciously solving navier-stokes, but it's still incredible what some human minds are capable of.

But then, he was thinking a lot about electron flow and built up a good intuition that had wider application. That doesn't make it any less amazing to me though. I'd like to be able to do that.

imperator14• 14 years ago

Tesla was an amazing man. Though our tools are impressive, I am still far more impressed by the human mind. A good use of tools relies on the exploration of consciousness. If both are not in harmony, we get mediocre results.

gcb• 14 years ago

a patent is a record of the working device, not the process used to get to it.

thinking of anyone as a supernatural genius is nonsense. most of the time.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

In the case of Da Vinci, Einstein, Tesla and a select number of others I think that thinking of them that way is well justified.

The general idea is that if the time is ripe for an idea then someone somewhere will have it, and if that someone would not exist someone else will have the idea a short while after.

But for the men mentioned above I highly doubt that would be the case, they were both way ahead of the curve at the time.

The Tesla Valve: One Way Flow With No Moving Parts

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