Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 303 War Ready Ships ([-])

Hyundai Special Shipyard is a young shipyard.The shipyard, which was built at the end of December last year, took less than three months under the key care of the Third Bureau of Communications and Construction (building various facilities for Hekou Fort, Xiangshan Fort, and West Lake Fort) active in the South Yazihu ​​area. The factories, dormitories, warehouses, storage yards, docks and other facilities are basically completed.Then, after a large number of technicians, craftsmen and apprentices were transferred from the Dayuhe Naval Shipyard, Zhenhai Shipyard and their vocational schools, the skeleton of the modern special shipyard was set up.

After spending a few months running in, the factory is currently in initial operation. In April, a 4-ton sailing multi-function ship specially designed by the Ship Design Institute, ordered by the Ministry of Communications, supervised by the Ministry of the Navy, and contracted by Zhenhai Shipyard was pulled by two inland steam steamers. In the shipyard of the Hyundai Special Shipyard, various planned experimental modifications began.

The ship was made of hardwoods harvested from the New China region, and it took ten months to complete the manufacture.The whole ship is 58.3 meters long and 9.3 meters wide.The designed ship has a weight of more than 300 tons, a standard displacement of 730 tons, a full load displacement of nearly 850 tons, and a high aspect ratio of 6.3:1.The ship adopts a flying scissor hollow bow design similar to the "Chaoyong", with three masts, a horizontal sail on the front mast, and a vertical sail on the middle mast and aft mast. Under normal circumstances, the speed reaches about 10-12 knots.

If you just look at the data, this ship seems a bit mediocre for today's China East Coast Republic.Because as early as the construction of the "Yangwu" in the early stage and then the "Chaoyong" in the later period, the designers of the Ship Institute of the Academy of Natural Sciences have accumulated a large amount of knowledge about flying shears through continuous efforts and experiments over the years. The parameters of the ship also have some experience in how to design the flying shear ship.

Therefore, although the speed of this newly built 730-ton multi-purpose ship has reached an astonishing speed of more than 10 knots, it has not reached the point where they are particularly excited.Because in the eyes of the ship designers on the east coast who have already mastered the design of flying scissor sailboats, this is really not fast, and it can even be said to be a bit slow.What was really special about this boat was the stern, where the original curved stern was slotted in the middle to accommodate a paddle oar.

"The paddle wheel of this boat is installed at the stern, which is a tail paddle, which is different from the waist paddle installed at the waist of the ship." Wei Hua, the captain of the modern special shipyard and former junior high school physics teacher, asked Xiao Bailang The introduction said, "Of course, the paddle wheel is installed, but there are still some minor problems in the transmission part, so the paddle wheel cannot be rotated yet."

"You paddle wheel..." Ding Canlin stood in the dry dock, staring at the huge paddle wheel at the stern and said, "It's not the same as the waist paddle wheel. I see the transmission of the waist paddle wheel on those small inland river steamers. The shaft is mounted in the very center of the paddle paddles and turns the paddles by itself. At first I even saw them use chains to spin the paddles, but yours is different from both... umm , a little..."

"It's a bit like the transmission method of train wheels, right?" Wei Hua laughed and said, "It's actually a principle. The biggest innovation here is to connect the connecting rod of the steam piston directly to the paddle paddle, and use the paddle paddle to connect with the paddle paddle. The inertia of the ship makes the cylinder move back and forth to make the piston move, driving the paddle wheel to rotate, so that the flywheel and gears are omitted, and the efficiency has also increased a lot. Well, this matter was brought up by the General Administration of Railways. Well, the technicians they sent are over there. We were planning to install a waist paddle wheel on each side of the ship as power. To be honest, we haven’t done much research on the tail paddle wheel. No, it’s just right. People from the General Administration of Railways are studying some technologies of the train running mechanism, and have produced some results, so they share them with us. This is beneficial to everyone. We save time and energy in research and development, and they also have the opportunity to verify that they are not It is a very mature and latest technology, which is convenient for future improvement. Let’s study together and make progress together.”

"The running mechanism of the train is much more complicated than yours." Xiao Bailang is a traffic committee member, and he is very concerned about the research and development of various train technologies on weekdays, so he is familiar with some technologies currently under research, so he said: " At least it has more than one wheel. If it is a four-wheel, six-wheel or even eight-wheel set, how to effectively transmit the power of the cylinder piston to the wheel is not a simple task. It involves the overall design of the transmission system, metal materials The smelting of the axle, the processing of the axle, the selection of lubricants, and even the development and processing of the bearings—well, this is difficult, and it is not necessary—a series of technologies, the complexity of which is beyond what you and I can imagine sitting here. Otherwise, why would some people call trains our "flowers of industry" at this stage? Hehe, fortunately, as long as you are willing to spend time, resources, and technicians on these things, you can conquer them without any problems. There are obstacles in principle. I believe that as long as we continue to invest in research and development, one day we will pick this delicate industrial flower."

Xiao Bailang accidentally delivered an impromptu speech, but he soon realized that he had spoken too much, so he covered it up with a haha ​​smile, then changed the subject and said: "Let's not talk about the paddle paddle issue, How is this power solved? How much output power can it provide?"

Xiao Bailang also had a reason for saying this.Don't look at the 35-ton small steamer of the Inland River Transport Company running happily in inland rivers, inland lakes, and coastal areas, but the level of this steam engine is not flattering.The boiler is bulky and heavy, the cylinder seal is poor, the thermal efficiency is low, and the output power is low. These are the unanimous views of the Ministry of Communications on this small 10-horsepower steam engine.

The cylinder pressure of this small steam engine is less than 0.3 MPa, and the total weight (boiler + cylinder) exceeds six tons. It consumes about 50-60 kg of clean coal produced by the Ping An Mining Bureau per hour. Such performance can only be said to be unsatisfactory.Fortunately, with the advancement of the domestic machine tool industry, the machining accuracy of each component of the steam engine has also improved a lot. Now its reliability has improved a lot, and the average time between failures has increased by dozens of times compared to the beginning.

Such a steam engine is actually not very economical to use on a small 35-ton inland flat-bottomed transport ship. After all, its own weight plus auxiliary mechanical parts, coal, boiler water, some spare parts, and chimneys have already taken up. A quarter of the ship's load is lost, which is too inefficient.However, at the beginning, the Government Administration Council, in line with the purpose of cultivating a lot of talents in the use and maintenance of steam engines, and gradually improving and perfecting the design of marine steam engines in practice, strongly led the steaming transformation project of more than 30 transport ships of local inland water transport companies.Under such circumstances, there is a spectacular scene of steam steamers running all over the ground in the local inland river.

"The power used now is a 'Popeye-1' marine single-cylinder steam engine newly developed by the boiler workshop of the No. , um, about 0.8 horsepower. The ability to have such a large output power is still due to the progress of our basic industry, such as the use of copper spring seal rings on the inner wall of the cylinder, such as the further improvement of the machining accuracy of each part of the cylinder (reducing At the same time, we have also optimized the design, such as adding an insulation shell to the outer wall of the cylinder, which reduces the heat loss during the piston’s work. What’s more, we have increased the temperature of the water vapor, which is about It looks between 30 degrees and 40 degrees, which further increases the expansion force of the gas, and the use of a large amount of lubricant also reduces the friction inside the steam engine.

"Is there a new product in the boiler workshop of No. 1 Machine Factory?" Ding Canlin asked in a daze.It is not unreasonable for him to say this. At present, there are many types of steam engines produced by the First Engine Factory, and there may be as many as a dozen types.There are not only the Barbarian-1 trial model, Barbarian-1 type, Barbarian-1 modification, Barbarian-2 machine general-purpose steam engine produced in the early stage, but also the Barbarian-3 used by the small river steamer. And its three follow-up improved models A, B, and C, as well as the Barbarian-4 high-power steam engine dedicated to steam tower cranes and its improved series. I heard that they are still studying the more powerful Barbarian-[-] steam engine for rolling steel recently.

Many of these steam engines have poor processing accuracy, parts cannot be interchanged, and maintenance costs are high. The first machine factory has also been overwhelmed by quality complaints from major users. Recently, it has been trying to recall some designs from customers. There is a defective steam engine.At the same time, we began to simplify the complexity, simplify the model, and use common parts as much as possible to facilitate maintenance.At this moment, Ding Canlin felt a burst of sadness for them when he heard that there was another "Popeye" steam engine produced by the First Machine Factory.

"The Popeye series is a steam engine specially developed for ships, with powerful power. Of course, the corresponding volume and weight are not small, and it can only be used on ships." Wei Hua also complained, "Look at this one. The 40-horsepower steam engine is so huge and heavy, even if it can really achieve the output power they said, I guess it can only provide about 3 knots of speed bonus for our multi-purpose ship under normal circumstances. This is different from our own 10 Compared with the speed of -12 knots, although the bonus is not small, it is really far from what we expected."

"Take your time." Xiao Bailang said comfortingly, "How long will it take for this multifunctional ship to be completed and commissioned?"

"Well, it will be ready in about a month." Wei Hua said after some calculations, "Our factory's current task is not very heavy, so we can take good care of this boat. Fix a steel boat inside the hull behind the paddle wheel. The cover is used for protection, some steel plates are added to important parts of the hull, steam sailing equipment is installed, fishing equipment is installed, the cabin for handling catches is remodeled, food storage rooms are redesigned, artillery is installed, etc. It takes about seven days to complete all the work. It's the end of the month, and when that time comes, this multi-functional ship 'Breaking the Wave', which integrates exploration, transportation, combat, communication and fishing, will definitely surprise everyone, haha!"

(End of this chapter)