Pedro Mattos da Silva

Abstract

The Tesla Valve is a device invented by Nikola Tesla in 1920. That apparatus offers a greater resistance to fluid flow in one direction than in the other. In this work, the implementation of Tesla valves in microfluidic heat exchangers is analyzed. For that, two aspects are taken into account: diodicity and heat transfer itself. To carry out the study, the Navier-Stokes and energy equations are implemented in an iterative Python program using the finite element method. From the method, simulations of flows in a Tesla valve for different Reynolds numbers are performed and the diodicity values are computed. Besides that, considering the walls of the valve at constant temperature, the outlet temperature of the fluid is calculated. That value is compared with the value obtained as a reference for a type of channel most commonly found in heat exchangers. The achieved results demonstrated that diodicity increases as the Reynolds number increases. Whit regard to heat transfer, no advantages were observed in using the Tesla device compared to the reference geometry

Advising

Advisor: Anjos, G. R.