Singular_Transform wrote:
That works well on railways, over the rail locomotive needs huge ballast weight anyway.
But on the ship the weight of gear set waaay lower than the weight of generator+motor, even if the stator is superconductor.
The US military actually invested a lot of money into superconductor winded generator/motor sets, to permit the operation of them on ships.
I think that the generator/motor sets will pay themselves only if the ships can start to use laser/rail guns , and if these systems weight will be lower than the same conventional system with ammunition/armoured protection.
But considering that a rail gun won't be capable to do the same thing like a missile I have strong doubts about it.
Masses and sizes of reduction gear have nothing to do with the advantages to get rid of them.
It's about mechanical complexities and scalability: the reduction gear is by far the most complex and critical part of any naval power train, and as applied power and torque on single axis increase, it become exponentially more challenging to develop a suitable reduction gear.
The very deceleration properties of a vessel are mainly function of its reduction gear ability to withstand the enormous stresses related to inversion of motus.
Again, classical power trains have to be mandatory arranged in a row: powerplant, main axis, reduction gear, final axis, screw.
It puts a severe constraint to internal arrangements.
Then, whatever the power requirements of the vessel, it translates to power outputs required to the engines, and again any acceleration translates in rapid revs changes for the engines, with loss of efficiency.
An integrated electric propulsion system get rid of all of those drawbacks and constraints.
You have only electric motors, axis and screw arranged in a row. Thermal engines can be accomodated wherever reputed the best option. Power transmission from thermal engines to electric ones is through electric lines, way cheaper than transmission axis, and could be doubled or tripled the same way flight-by-wire lines are on aircrafts, making them more damage resistant. Electric motors have enormous torque, without any mechanical challenges connected neither with net power nor with torque generated, and they act both as motors, as brakes and as electrical power generator, depending on what is required from them in that specific second.
Using a batteries buffer, as in SSK, between thermal engines and electric ones, any quick change in power requirement (acceleration) could be attained draining at start part of the additional electric power required from the batteries' buffer, giving thermal engines time to gain revs speed and power output on a more gentle way, in turn extending their service life, reducing the chances of faults and generally consuming less fuel.
In an ASW vessel, it could even be possible to switch for a while to all electric propulsion, using batteries only or just a small and highly sound insulated generation set, to perform very discreet slow speed chases of enemy's sub.
Actually electric integrated propulsion opens a whole new world of opportunities.
The citation of trains' engines is really good, just it works on the other way: Kolomna is specialized mainly on trains' diesel engines, requiring very slow accelerations only, and the power sets developed for Pr. 20380 seem to be not up the task, because they miss the flexible running characteristic of naval medium speed diesel engines.
Making them work as electric power generators would have give them a far better reputation.