"Navy Destroyer Runs On Modified Jet Engines, Is Terrifying" Topic

"The Zumwalt is the first of a planned three ships in a class of new guided missile Destroyers. The electric propulsion will come from modified Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines, built for the Boeing 777-200, 777-200LR and 777-300. On planes, each Trent 800 provides 75,000-95,000 pounds of thrust.

Rolls-Royce says there are currently 220 aircraft flying with Trent 800 engines in service today. Rolls-Royce also builds the Trent 900 for the Airbus A380, and the Trent 1000 for the Boeing 787…"
Full article here
link

Nice pics

Amicalement
Armand

Not news, the USN has been running on gas turbines since the 1970s (FFG-7s and Spruance-class DDs).

By my calculation that comes in about 105,000 hp, which seems light to me for a 14,000 ton warship.
I have this image of the ship going dark while spooling up power to the wave motion.., sorry rail gun.

The Royal Navy has been running on turbines since the last time they were shooting Germans…

Did the previous FFGs, Spruances etc mentioned use direct drive off of the turbines?

I think the point of the article is that the turbines in the Zumwalt drive electric motors… Is that unusual in surface ships?

Gas turbines are a post WW2 type (since they are basically a turbo-shaft jet). Steam turbines have been around since the last 1800's…

Electric drives have been around for a hundred years. One the 'standard' US BBs from WWI (I forget which) had electric drive. No real news in this article (acutally, a pretty lame article).

I think the point of the article is that the turbines in the Zumwalt drive electric motors… Is that unusual in surface ships?

Depends. Some of the US ships in WW2 used turbo-electric drive, as have a couple nuclear submarines. Steam turbines spin generators, electric motors spin the shafts. link

What has generally caused troubles for warships has been the relatively low performance of the electric motors. It's taken a long time before electric motors became capable of the same performance as a steam turbine and reduction gears.

These days, the Navy likes the idea because it simplifies the training pipelines. Steam plants are all unique to the class of ship, but a gas turbine-driven generator is essentially identical in all installations, and the electric motors can be built to be modular, or like the old radial engines. Need more power? add another row of pistons (or in this case, row of magnets). No major retraining, it's just a matter of having 4 sets of armatures instead of 2 or 3. Or whatever the real numbers and terms are.

Not seeing the "terrifying" aspect that REQUIRED it to be mentioned twice in the article, either.

My mistake the first gas turbines were used by the Royal Navy, and on a ship of WWII vintage, but weren't fitted until the early 1950s. Still, 60 year old technology is not a leap forward.

link

The LM-2500 (a modified DC-10 engine if I remember correctly) has been the standard gas turbine engine for most USN surface ships since the FFG-7 and DD-963 classes were built. The USN decommissioned all of its steam-powered FFs, DDs, CGs/CGNs and BBs in the 90s as a cost savings measure (gas turbine power plants require fewer people to operate than a steam propulsion plant).

I retired in 2008, so I will admit to being a bit out of the loop, but the USN was making a move toward electric drive prior to that; I believe the new CVN class is turboelectric. This is the first gas turbine-electric USN ship I've heard of, though.

Historically, I seem to remember about a half dozen USN BBs and a couple of CVs during WW2 that were turboelectric, as well as some of the smaller ASW escorts.

Regards,

Scott Chisholm

RN has had gas turbine electric propulsion in Type 45 for some time now.