Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1569 Spring of Science ([-])

Xuefeng Lake has a rare good weather today.The golden sunlight shines on the calm lake, reflecting a different kind of beauty.The sparkling water on the lake looks like a silver mirror from a distance.

However, ordinary people are not blessed to enjoy such beautiful scenery, because this is a military restricted area—at least the entire lake has been closed for a few days—ordinary people are basically stopped by the special police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs at a place a few kilometers away from the pier up.And if you insist on not complying and continue to move forward, or spy on ghosts, then I'm sorry, the prison of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is waiting for you, and after you have a round in the hands of those secret police, you will have to shed your skin even if you are not dead.

The reason why Xuefeng Lake (later Argentine Lake) was closed during this period is mainly because some marine research projects jointly promoted by the Engineering Technology Research Institute and Hyundai Special Shipyard have reached the stage of intensive and fruitful results.After negotiating for a while, the two parties decided to rely on these new technologies to build a test ship to verify the feasibility of some technologies for future research and improvement.For this reason, Hyundai Factory also specially sent people to build a small ship assembly workshop near the wharf of Xuefeng Town, using all kinds of plates transported from Huangyang River and Nanzhuo Liangyang Railway Branch Line (extending from Heishan Township to Xuefeng Town) And spare parts, the secondary processing is carried out in the town first, because there is a small branch of the Second Heavy Machinery Factory in the local area (specially serving the Electrical Institute of the Academy of Engineering and the ship project), which has certain mechanical processing capabilities.

The processed parts are then pulled to the wharf by heavy-duty freight wagons, where the craftsmen assemble and integrate them—this step is also critical. The installation of marine steam engines and propulsion systems is not a simple job, and requires extensive experience Engineers and technicians can complete it.Today, after many efforts, the technicians of the Hyundai Factory and the Ship Institute of the Academy of Engineering have jointly sunk the construction of a small ship, a small steam ship named "Xuefeng Lake-3".

From the naming of this ship, it can be seen that this is probably the third ship developed by this team, so it was named No. [-].The appearance of each ship is to verify some new technologies. Researchers rationally integrate the technologies they have accumulated over a period of time, and then apply for special funds from the "Science Spring" project to start construction for verification.And if they find that the previous thoughts and ideas do not work, they will rectify the ship, and then launch the test in order to accumulate data, and so on, until the ship is completely scrapped.

The "Xuefeng Lake-3" is already the third ship they have applied for special funds to build. Its tonnage is similar to that of the "Xuefeng Lake-2" that is currently stranded by the lake, both of which are more than 100 tons. Suitable for sailing in this lake.The construction cost of the ship exceeded 2 yuan, which sounds amazing. This is probably mainly because the ship needs to be redesigned, the transportation of materials and components is time-consuming and laborious, and the application of many new technologies and new equipment is costly.

Today is the first sea trial of "Xuefeng Lake-3". Wei Anni (Viviani), a famous mathematician on the east coast, ship designer, and deputy director of the Ship Institute of the Academy of Engineering, also came to the scene to observe it in person. After all, He himself participated in many aspects of this project from beginning to end, and he personally helped the project team to submit a report to the review team of "Science Spring" to apply for special funds for the construction of the ship. one look.

The biggest improvement of "Xuefeng Lake-3" is probably the change of the marine boiler.It is actually quite embarrassing to say that the marine boilers used by the people on the east coast were actually copied from the land boilers, because at that time no one knew how to design such a thing, so they could only explore a little bit.

Back then, Zhang Xiao, Wei Hua and others in the Hyundai factory used brick boilers in their original design, that is, the boilers were heated from the outside. As a result, they were shot dead just before boarding the ship because of their low efficiency.Later, they contacted Ping'an Iron and Steel Works, specially cast a thick-walled iron boiler, and added a combustion box inside it, forming a marine "box" boiler with a smooth flue and hearth—this The advantage of this kind of boiler is that it can increase the evaporation area in the limited usable space on the ship, and it is suitable for supplying some steam with low pressure. It is more in line with the relatively elementary marine steam engine technology and low power output on the east coast at that time. The early "Breaking Waves" and "Chopping Waves" were all like this. Although there were frequent breakdowns, they still made it all the way, didn't they?

Later, this early design also exposed quite a few flaws, such as low steam efficiency (which means that the main power is still relying on sails, and the poor power provided by the steam engine can only be used when entering and leaving the port. )etc.In addition, due to the extreme importance of fresh water during ocean voyages, the initial boilers often burn not necessarily fresh water, but sea water!This requires that the boiler must drain the water from time to time to avoid salt deposition, and iron boilers corrode quite quickly in this case, making the life of early marine boilers quite short, with many problems and high costs. The ministry began to instruct the three major shipyards to speed up the research and development of new boilers.

Later, the three major shipyards—in fact, mainly Hyundai Special Shipyard invested heavily—and some new boilers jointly researched by the Academy of Engineering were first tested in Duck Lake in Zhenhai County, and later they were simply transferred to Xuefeng Lake.During the ten or 20 years of research and development, Dongan people have tried various solutions and overcome many difficulties. Finally, with the progress of materials (such as replacing the original corrosive cast iron with low carbon steel, of course, it is even more used now. Ferromanganese) has developed many new boiler models, and the context of technological progress can be seen from this series of boiler designs and parameters.

"'Xuefeng Lake-3' uses the latest water tube boiler, with a steam pressure of more than 10 kilograms per square centimeter. Of course, this is a double-expansion boiler, made of ferromanganese material, a circular shell boiler, The flue is much stronger than the previous ones. Both the boiler and the cylinder can withstand higher pressure, which means that we can design a marine steam engine with greater output power, as long as we can scale up the boiler and cylinder in the same proportion That’s it.” By the breezy Xuefeng Lake, the project team leader is carefully introducing the technical indicators of the “Xuefeng Lake-3” to Wei Anni, and the first thing he introduces is the most important boiler system.

In the power research and development system of the people on the east coast, the assessment standard has never been how many horsepower steam engines you can build, but the efficiency of boilers and cylinders.When the British who were just starting out in the Old World were still complacent about building a more powerful steam engine—for which they built a boiler the size of a house—the people on the east coast who had been immersed in this way for many years , focusing more on the maximum pressure that boilers and cylinders can withstand, sealing level, machining accuracy, etc., rather than blindly stacking horsepower.

Wei Anni nodded when he heard the words. He actually knew the steam propulsion system named "Popeye-9" very well.This re-expansion steam engine has three cylinders, and the steam pressure generated during work is 10.5 kilograms per square centimeter, which is very amazing, and it is also an improvement made by the people on the east coast in this technology-this is an overall progress. It includes innovations in design, manufacturing, sealing, materials, etc. After integration, it is used in a new steam propulsion system, which can be described as a master.

And if the "Popeye-9" steam propulsion system can get a relatively good evaluation in this and future relatively long-term experiments, then it can be applied to other ships.Especially for those large ships, people on the east coast can use these current technologies to make the propulsion system appropriately large, so [-] or even [-] horsepower will not be a problem.Even, if the designer is brave enough, further increase the pressure of the boiler and cylinder, and optimize the design of the mechanical and transmission parts-this part is also very critical, because if the design is not reasonable, the output power will be reduced and dragged down. The efficiency of the entire propulsion system - then it will not be a problem to create a steam propulsion system with higher horsepower.

"'Xuefeng Lake-3' differs from all previous ships in that it uses iron keels and ship ribs for the first time, which avoids the serious damage caused by the potential difference between the wooden keel and iron ship ribs. Corrosion problems, although it is not without defects..." The project leader looked at the boats that were slowly entering the lake through the steel slide rails, and continued to introduce.

As the project leader just introduced, "Xuefeng Lake-3" is the first iron keel ship on the east coast in the true sense, which is epoch-making to some extent, because it heralds the shipbuilding some possibility in the world.However, limited by the slow progress in the research and development of large hydraulic presses, the iron keel of "Xuefenghu-3" is not forged as a whole, because the current "Ironsmith" series hydraulic presses and hydraulic presses are still unable to forge iron parts of this specification.

This keel is actually processed in sections and time-sharing, which leads to different stresses in different parts of the keel, and the internal structure is also very problematic. Once the ship sails on the sea with strong waves, because of the force factor of the waves, This kind of iron keel is likely to break from the middle, which is not as good as those carefully selected wooden keels.

After all, the wood that can be selected to make keels is not necessarily inferior to iron keels in terms of strength, toughness, and corrosion resistance, or even worse.Especially now that the tonnage of ships on the east coast is generally not large enough (this means that there is no need to look for particularly tall trees), and the timber resources in the 17th century are relatively abundant, the development of iron keels not only has to face There are many technical problems, and its competitiveness in commercial applications is not as good as that of wood. In today's East Coast Republic, wood resources are too rich and too cheap, so that not only iron keels have no market (especially quality It is still very problematic), and no one is willing to buy even iron ship ribs. One is that the price is expensive, but the quality may not be very good. Corrosion problems, which further dampen people's enthusiasm for using iron ship ribs, unless the price of wooden ship ribs is much higher than that of iron one day, there is no solution.

Therefore, the iron keel and iron ribs on the "Xuefeng Lake-3" in front of us are actually not of commercial promotion significance, because they are neither economical nor practical. I believe that they will not be used by major domestic shipbuilding companies in the short term adopted.Their true golden age was when ships got bigger and bigger and tropical giants became less available (or more expensive) to East Coasters.Only at that time, people may look for more economical and cheap materials, such as iron keels and ribs, because of the scarcity and high cost of giant wood suitable for shipbuilding. Of course, the first choice requires the simultaneous development of metallurgy and forging technology. Otherwise it will not work.

From this point of view, some of the new technologies on the "Xuefeng Lake-3" are really just tests, verifications, and some technical reserves. I am afraid that there will be no future for commercialization in a short time.Of course, steam engine technology is another matter. I believe that after designing some new high-horsepower steam units, some new ships will definitely consider them when they are built. As the holder of many patented technologies for new steam units, the state-owned The modern special shipyard will obviously find a way to promote high-horsepower steam units, but this may require them to redesign a ship type (it is estimated that when the horsepower reaches more than 1000, the dead weight of this steam unit from the East Coast will be more than 20 tons. Difficult to retrofit on existing ships), but they clearly have the ability, don't they?

At around ten o'clock in the morning, the boiler of "Xuefeng Lake-3" finished heating up. With a loud whistle, this small tonnage test ship, which carried many advanced ship technologies, began to slow down on the lake. It started to move slowly, and the speed became faster and faster, and it disappeared into people's eyelids in a short while.According to the plan, the ship will sail westward to the wharf area of ​​Jing'an Township, where it will be fully loaded with cargo and then return to conduct all-round full testing.

Wei Anni did not set off with the ship, because it was unnecessary. The members of the later project team would naturally write a detailed test report and submit it to his desk, and then he would review it carefully.Therefore, after chatting with other people by the lake, he took the carriage back to the town. He still had a lot of work to do, but he didn't have much time to spend here for a long time. Supporting scientific research is a good opportunity for them to flex their muscles, how can it be wasted!

(End of this chapter)