NAVAL ENGINEERING RECORD.

Northern Advocate, 22 June 1920, Page 4

NAVAL ENGINEERING RECORD.

It is a tradition in the 13 rilish Navy that nothing is recommended for general adoption until it has beer tried out thoroughly under an exhaustive series of tests. To a larg« extent this tradition was necessarilj abandoned during the war, and th< naval engineers were compelled tc stake their reputation and the safety of the ships on devices which wer< almost experimental. A notable cas« is the use of mechanical gearing be tween the turbin e and th e propellor A steam turbine runs most efficient ly at high speeds, so that in ordei io get the best results it is necessarj to arrange a speed-reducing meehan ism between the two, much us is don* between the engine and the driving shaft on a motor car. It was onl; just before the war that mechaniea gears were tried on British nava vessels, but the engineering staff o the Admiralty pinned their faith oi the excellence of British design am workmanship and within thre e year they succeeded in transmitting n< less than 20,000 horse power throug] a single set of gearing. Battle-cruis ers, light cruisers, torpedo-boat dcs troyers, submarines, and patrol boat were fitted out with gears until no\ there are clos e on 600 gears in ser vice, representing nearly 6.800,001 horse power. The batest large shij to be fitted on this system is a battle cruiser in which 36,000 horse powe is transmitted through one set o: gearing. The early problems in gea: transmission for marine purpose; were worked out by a world-famou British engineering firm.