Study on usage of tesla valve as heat exchanger

Abstract

The Tesla valve is appealing for drift control and rectification in mini and microfluidic applications due to its passive operation and no-shifting-elements design. The effectiveness of such valves may be increased through their in-series association. In this study, a new Tesla-type valve is effectively designed to improve the amount of heat transfer by facilitating circulation. The Tesla valve is a one-way valve without a moving component that lets the fluid flow effortlessly in a single direction, but presents a very high impedance in the opposite direction. The present study deals with a numerical analysis of the Tesla valve design for the optimal amount of heat transfer. For this purpose, the Taguchi layout optimization approach is considered for the simulation by creating a Design of Experiments (DOE) array. The factors considered are heat flux, velocity, and type of flow, with three levels each. The design is done in SOLIDWORKS, and the simulation is performed in Analysis of Systems (ANSYS). The inlet temperature of the fluid is 22.75 °C, and water is considered the working fluid. The result of the simulation shows that the design with an inlet velocity of 0.25 m/sec and a backward flow type provides the highest heat input of 45000 W/m2.