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.
Well. Describing our ideas without a diagram breaks down rapidly. I imagined a valve bobbing in the water, slowly elevating the water in a reservoir with each wave undulation. Thinking about it more, the problem would be an eventual equalization in pressure. But of course, I read this paragraph again and there all ways of imagining what the words are saying. If we were to really understand each other, we'd need to whiteboard.
I'm not sure that a Tesla Valve would be all that useful for tapping wave motion now that I think of it. It might not work. One way to think of it is to imagine using a one way ball valve. That has helped me in the past from ascribing too much magic or revolutionary nature to the Tesla Valve.
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.
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/
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.
1. All one-way valves depend on flow. If there is a higher pressure from A to B. And that's the direction of resistance, then in a valve with moving parts, a ball or diaphragm of some sort would be pushed against a lip, and the flow would stop. That still depends on a pressure difference where flow was traveling from some high pressure point to some low pressure point. Let's say that valve was off design for the flow rate. It may not have enough pressure to seal, and it would still be leaky. The Tesla Valve's performance is measured by its diodicity, and it has to be matched to the conditions it's supposed to exist in. If it was really well designed, it's diodicity would be very high and thus leakage would be minimized. From an engineering standpoint it still usually makes sense to use valves with moving parts on your example lox tank. As the main way of checking flow, they are well understood and very reliable. However, if you are in a situation where a moving part is a negative, like in microfluidics, a Tesla valve might make more sense.
2. Liquids and gases have different viscosity, so the Tesla Valve would be different for each fluid and flow regime. I am unfamiliar with this series-of-petals geometry you are remembering. However, it reminds me of this excellent work done on optimizing topology for different Reynolds numbers in Tesla Valves: http://www.senlin41.org/topology-optimization-of-tesla-type-...
3. One of the original intents of the valve was for Tesla's Bladeless Disc Turbine. In Tesla's time, materials were not what they are now, and thus valves with moving parts were not as reliable. Also, getting a valve that can close and open with high frequency is not always easy. The valvular conduit that Tesla designed was his solution to this problem.
Thanks for the book reference. I read "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla" But I hadn't seen this other book. I might pick it up.
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.
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.
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
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-...
The Tesla Valve is a leaky valve, which is why we still use one way valves with moving parts. The amount of leakage depends on the design of the valve and how well it suits the incoming fluid. A faster fluid will result in a different looking valve compared to a slower fluid. The valves design would also change based on the viscosity of the fluid.
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.
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.
Agreed. I think that was Cringley's best point, and also why I sometimes get frustrated in the valley. Some people say they like ideas here, but what they really like are startups and the effects of the ecosystem.
I am an author and have a book distributed over Kindle. People who bought my book wanted to buy it, and people who pirated it wanted to get it for free. That's okay with me. The two are not linked.
I would never get angry if someone loaned one of my books to another person, so why would I get angry about someone pirating it. And if people had not loaned me many books, I would never have grown to love writing. It's just the case that the internet can loan many books to people easily (or so I see it).
The market is very fickle about what it likes. Effort spent fighting piracy should be spent on writing more books and promoting them. In the meantime, I would endorse piracy of a commercially failed book as a way of spreading my name.
It's obvious this person's book didn't fail in touching people, it just failed in inspiring them to buy. The solution to any writer's problem is to write more.
In a way you are both right. There are currently two aspects of the American space industry.
One, the moribund aerospace giants that are largely just making the same old rockets, entrenched in their job creation programs.
And two, the new space companies, which are making suborbital rocketplanes and cheap boosters. At present, they may not look impressive because of small steps they are taking, but you just have to look at Scaled's Space Ship Two to realize that radical innovation in their design is not dead.
This has been a long time coming, and there has been a dark age in aerospace.
Aside from aerospace. While I agree that there have been game changers like the cell phone, I do agree with Kasparov that there is an atmosphere of risk aversion. For instance I don't see any daring research programs like when DARPA funded Engelbart's augment research that led to Human User Interface objects like the mouse. And that disturbs me. Often visionaries look very crazy or at best very hard to understand because they are operating out of the scope of our context. I don't see people having the patience for these visionaries. And the people who do claim to be visionaries seem to have very conservative imaginations.
I was asleep when all of these replies came in. And I had it set for me to approve all comments because I had been getting spam. I approved your reply just now.
I just canceled my Facebook account today, after thinking about it for some time, and specifically in reaction to recent events. The type of decline illustrated in this timeline is reason number one. From my point of view, Facebook is no longer enhancing my life activities, and now on its way to hindering it.
The various reactions to canceling my account were interesting. Some people seemed almost angry. Some just wanted to make sure to get my email.