Doomsday: Humanity shrinks 100 times

Chapter 217 The First Sea Trial

In addition to the transmission device, the second part to be completed is the boiler. Because it needs to withstand high pressure, this part is also more cautious and cooling issues must be considered.

However, the reason why steam engines are more suitable to be placed on ships is mainly because there is an endless supply of cooling water, which is the greatest guarantee for device cooling.

Otherwise, the steam device under high pressure and high temperature will easily have problems, and the components will also be damaged under high temperature.

With their current technological capabilities, the cooling part can only be made into a sprinkler type, that is, water is pumped from the river, part of it is used to generate steam, and the other part is stored in a water tank, and the steam engine is sprinkled with water to cool it.

When the most difficult steam system was finally developed, 5 days had passed. After all the components were made, the overall volume was approximately 15cmx25cmx15cm. The weight could not be accurately estimated, but their main material was aluminum alloy, so the weight could only be roughly estimated.

Based on this, they need to make a wooden boat with sufficient capacity. Although they would like to use other materials, it is not allowed at present.

There are many factors that affect the final size of a ship, such as displacement, load capacity, etc., but the main influencing factor is the power of the power plant.

Logically speaking, before the hull is officially built, the power unit needs to be tested for power.

However, this is beyond their capabilities. The power of a steam engine has many parameters, including steam volume, speed, temperature, pressure, etc.

Obviously, these forces cannot be accurately measured with their capabilities.

So in the end, we can only get results through practice.

However, there is one value they can measure: water displacement.

Knowing the displacement of the hull will reveal its load-to-volume ratio, so the experimental range can be roughly determined.

If the kinetic energy device cannot meet the propulsion needs of the minimum load-carrying hull, it is necessary to increase the kinetic energy conversion capacity of the steam engine, such as increasing the heat of the heat source.

However, when the kinetic energy generated by the steam engine is far more than enough to propel the ship, efficiency issues need to be considered.

After all, their heat source is not coal, but relies on Zou Yunxin's solar energy conversion. If the heat consumption is much higher than his conversion efficiency, then even if it can generate enough propulsion force, it is meaningless if it cannot be supplied continuously.

So the next step is a lot of experiments and calculations to continuously improve it.

Mechanical devices with higher complexity are often accompanied by precise measuring instruments, which is also their future development direction.

This ship is both the end and the starting point of their technology in the park. With the continuous enrichment of materials, it is only a matter of time before they enter the industrial age.

It is not easy to install the power equipment on the ship smoothly, and it is also a major project.

Considering that multiple experiments and adjustments might be needed later, the engineering department simply built a tower crane.

In fact, it is just a combination of a winch and a pulley. As for the aerial fulcrum, only the symbiote can grow one.

……

The first ship was made quickly. When the entire set of equipment was assembled on the ship, this huge structure made of a mixture of metal and special wooden materials left a shocking impression on Lu Yuning.

Considering the difficulty of manufacturing, a steam turbine steamship was finally chosen.

That is, two rotating steam turbines are installed on both sides of the ship to serve as propulsion.

Compared with propellers, its manufacturing cost is lower, but its efficiency is much lower.

The main reason is that half of its blades are in the air, and this part of the kinetic energy is wasted.

The two methods use different transmission devices.

Of course, it is still in the trial stage. If this method does not meet the sailing power requirements, it will eventually have to be changed to a propeller.

After the heavy metal anchor was pulled up by the winch, the entire ship began to glide slowly along the river, and then gradually sailed away from the main base port of Shimmer. With a rumbling sound, the first sea trial officially began.

The two steam turbines accelerated, and Lu Yuning felt a strong power coming from the soles of his feet.

Then the ship slowly turned in a circle on the river, and finally the bow turned upstream.

After adjusting the direction, Zhang Muyan in the control room pushed up the gear control lever.

The gear position mainly controls the turbine speed by adjusting the gear ratio.

In addition, they also developed a set of idle energy, which is actually equivalent to backup energy.

When going down the river, you can use idle energy. The purpose of idle energy is to give the main energy source time to replace or recharge.

When the two energy sources are used at the same time, the greatest propulsion force will be generated. This situation will probably be used in more turbulent rivers.

Zhang Muyan is quite proud of this design and its implementation.

After the gear change, the ship began to speed up obviously. Although it was only the first trial voyage, the effect was unexpectedly good.

Although it is currently traveling in the opposite direction, it still has plenty of power.

As the ship gradually passed through the harbor, the crowd on the shore gathered around to watch, and everyone was very excited.

After sailing about fifty meters upstream, the trial ship finally encountered the first problem.

The transmission system, which was running at high speed, actually experienced gear cracking.

This occurs when increasing cruising speed, as high RPM puts a lot of stress on the entire system.

There is no good solution to this problem, and the limitation mainly comes from the material of the gear.

Although the core components have been treated to reduce friction, the gears used for transmission cannot be treated in the same way.

As expected, problems occurred under high-intensity operation tests.

Although other parts currently appear to be fine, material breakage occurred after only 50 meters of sailing.

This means that the entire system has this hidden danger.

According to previous test results, parts will break if the speed exceeds about 0.5 meters per second.

This seems to be their current limit, but this speed is actually not bad compared to walking speed.

Moreover, they were going upstream, and the conditions were quite harsh.

If you want to improve it, you can only reduce the weight of the hull or find a harder material to replace the current one.

After discussion, everyone decided to reduce the size of the ship appropriately. After all, they would have to load a lot of things on the ship later.

After this exploration, finding suitable materials may be able to solve the current problem of material hardness.

Overall, this trial voyage was unexpectedly successful, but the experiment still needs to continue. We must be careful if we want to sail long distances.

This is also the reason why Lu Yuning decided to go upstream. After all, if the boat breaks down upstream, he can still go downstream.

If problems arise downstream, the only option is to abandon ship.

(End of this chapter)