Black technology starts from the steel suit

Chapter 237 Conventional Powered Submarines
As we all know, one of the important indicators of a submarine is endurance. The endurance here does not refer to the ability to sail on the water like a ship, but refers to the endurance under water. This is for no defense force. Very important for a submarine that would die if exposed.

So for a submarine, the performance of the battery almost determines the performance of the submarine.Of course, there are two kinds of submarines that are not listed here.

One is a submarine using a Stirling engine, and the other is a nuclear-powered submarine, also called an attack nuclear submarine.

Needless to say about nuclear-powered submarines. Although this thing is noisy, has a lot of heat, and is easy to be discovered, the problem is that it runs fast and has a high endurance. Warships cannot catch up with it, but can catch up with it. The helicopter does not have enough attack capabilities. .
Nuclear submarines with torpedoes, anti-submarine missiles, anti-ship missiles, and cruise missiles as their main weapons.They are divided into torpedo attack nuclear submarines, flying missile nuclear submarines and multi-purpose nuclear submarines.

Attack-type nuclear submarines are mainly used to attack submarines, large and medium-sized surface combat ships, service ships and important targets on land, to escort large surface ship formations such as ballistic missile nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, and to perform reconnaissance, transportation, minelaying, and deployment of unmanned water vehicles. Disembarking aircraft, transporting special personnel and other tasks.

It has the characteristics of good concealment, large diving depth, high underwater speed, large endurance, wide maneuvering range, and strong attack power. It is an important part of modern naval weapons and equipment.

After the United States built the first nuclear-powered submarine "Nautilus" in 1954, it built the second-generation "Jumping Fish" class attack nuclear submarine in 1961, successfully combining nuclear power and drop-shaped boats, and the underwater speed reached 30 knots or more.

With high speed and long endurance, it is suitable for the needs of the navy's ocean-going operations.Since the 60s, the United States has stopped the construction of conventional submarines, and has developed all-nuclear submarines. It has developed a total of "ray", "jumping" class, "thresher" class, "sturgeon" class, "Los Angeles" class, A total of 7 attack nuclear submarines of the "Seawolf" class and "Virginia" class have been built.

Another major country began to develop attack nuclear submarines in 1952, and built the first nuclear submarine "November" in 1958. In the 70s, it canceled the design and construction of conventional submarines and developed three types of nuclear submarines. In the late 3s, it resumed conventional submarines. put up.

In the 90s, Russia began to design and build the "Severodvinsk" ("Yasen" class) attack nuclear submarine.The Soviet Union and Russia built a total of 7 class 10 torpedo attack nuclear submarines and 4 class 7 flying missile nuclear submarines, respectively N ("November") class, V ("Victor") class (VI, V -Ⅱ and V-Ⅲ three models), A ("Alpha") class, S ("Sierra") class, M ("Mike") class, Akula ("Akula") class, Yasen ("Ya Sen") class attack nuclear submarine, E ("Echo") class, C ("Charlie") class, P ("Ancha tree") class, O ("Oscar") class flying missile nuclear submarine.

Among them, the 10th "Kursk" flying missile nuclear submarine of the O-class II type sank in the Barents Sea due to a torpedo oxygen system failure and a torpedo explosion during a military exercise in August 2000.

Britain's first nuclear submarine "Dreadnought" entered service in 1963, and has developed five levels of attack nuclear submarines, namely "Dreadnought", "Warrior", "Fast", "Trafalgar" and "Agile" A new generation of attack nuclear submarines is under development.

The reason why Russia develops conventionally powered submarines is very simple. One is because it has no money and cannot afford the huge maintenance costs. You must know that the construction and maintenance costs of nuclear-powered submarines are very high.

Because the construction cost of nuclear power plants accounts for the majority, and for the sake of the safety of nuclear power plants, a large amount of cost must be invested in maintenance.

Of course, it is also because they need to support the country's finances with the arms business, but nuclear-powered submarines cannot be sold, so conventional power boats have become a must-have project.

We once bought some diesel-electric submarines from others, and later planned to buy later improved diesel-electric submarines, but found that they seemed unreliable, so we never made it.

But this does not mean that Lao Maozi's nuclear submarine will not work. In fact, the nuclear submarine used by Lao Maozi himself has always been possible, and the technology is also very advanced.

Russia is the record holder for the largest tonnage nuclear submarine in the world, the record holder for the fastest nuclear submarine in the world, and the record holder for the deepest submerged nuclear submarine in the world.

The former may be nothing, after all, it is a product of insufficient technology, but the significance of the latter two is very important. There is still a very large gap between the diving depth of 400 meters and the diving depth of 600 meters. As for the speed, for ordinary submarines, the significance may be Not that big, but for a nuclear submarine, it means a lot.

Nuclear-powered submarines mainly rely on their speed advantage rather than static mode to get rid of the pursuit of anti-submarine ships. If a nuclear submarine is fully powered, it can easily reach a speed of 35 knots, or even a speed of more than 40 knots. Anti-submarine ships cannot catch up at all. .

Then let’s look at Stirling engine submarines. Before Wang Feng’s lithium battery improvement, mainstream conventional submarines had been transformed from diesel-electric submarines to Stella engine-type submarines, also called AIP submarines.

With the tense situation in Asia, the word AIP began to appear in more and more reports, but like almost all words related to submarines, it is outdated and to some extent anti-common sense terms, plus exaggerated words from the media , so that AIP has a big misunderstanding.

First of all, the name AIP is misleading. AIP is the acronym for Air-Independent Propulsion in English, and "Air-Independent Propulsion" in Chinese. But in fact, AIP is not only used for submarines to provide power, but also to provide modern weapons that consume a lot of power. As well as the electricity needed for the crew's living and living, it should actually be called "Air-Independent Power" and does not rely on air for energy supply.

Due to the inability to directly ingest oxygen underwater, submarines before the birth of nuclear power were almost always powered by battery storage to drive the motor and then drive the propeller forward.When surfacing or at periscope depth, the intake and exhaust ports are extended to drive a diesel generator to store electricity for the battery, hence the name diesel-electric submarine.

However, since diesel generators need oxygen and exhaust ports to work, and the charging time of batteries greatly limits the underwater endurance of submarines, most submarines during World War II are actually more like "submersible torpedo boats", only attacking and evading attacks time to dive underwater.

With the rapid development of submarine technology during the Cold War, especially the birth of the drop-shaped shell that optimizes underwater navigation, it has become a top priority to extend the underwater endurance of diesel-electric submarines. Sweden proposed the A-11 plan at the rear of the boat. The bottom compartment is filled with batteries to increase battery life.

Of course, this plan did not pass. The ignorant battery added a lot of weight to the submarine, and it also increased the risk factor, especially the fire caused by leakage. The A-11 plan finally gave way to a new plan that was quite sci-fi at the time. Diesel-electric submarines needed air propulsion, but the new plan did not, so it was named AIP and code-named A-11C.
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11C comes with a large amount of liquid oxygen to solve the problem of diesel requiring oxidizer. At the same time, it adopts the closed-cycle design of the Stirling engine and does not exchange exhaust gas with the atmosphere.

Although the A-11C was eventually canceled, the Gotland-class submarine based on this design became the world's first AIP submarine in mass service. Sustained underwater voyage for several weeks.

So far, most AIP submarines still use a similar Stirling engine design, which is used to prolong underwater endurance or provide additional kinetic energy underwater to complete a short-term speed increase.

The Stirling engine is not completely without drawbacks. Compared with traditional motors and nuclear-powered steam turbines, the complex mechanical transmission structure of the Stirling engine means that it will produce a lot of vibration and noise. For submarines where sound is life and death It is very deadly, so the Stirling engine must be installed in a specially set soundproof buffer cabin, and it is not necessarily willing to use it in combat.

Another less obvious shortcoming is that although it is a closed-cycle design, the Stirling engine still relies on the combustion of fuel and oxygen, and oxygen as a gas will gradually compress its volume as the submarine's diving depth increases and cannot be fully burned.

The best working pressure of the Stirling engine is 20bar, that is, the Stirling engine cannot work effectively when the submarine dives more than 200 meters. Unless there is an additional pressurization device, the exhaust gas cannot be discharged from the submarine, which is an additional source of noise. and energy consumption.

Therefore, there is another design in the AIP family, the fuel cell AIP pioneered by Germany and Italy.Since underwater diesel cannot burn without air, wouldn’t it be over if I don’t use diesel?

Also borrowed from the fuel cell design that provides electricity on space vehicles, it generates electricity through the redox reaction of hydrogen-containing compounds and liquid oxygen, and directly supplies power to batteries or motors.The only by-product is water, which can be discharged overboard or used by the crew.

However, hydrogen is not something that is easy to store. It is not safe to place things that are more flammable and explosive than batteries in a closed submarine. The solution led by the Type 212 submarine is the hybrid shell design.

A bit like a Maozi double-hulled submarine, put liquid oxygen and hydrogen outside, even if there is an accident, it will not cause too much harm to yourself.

Hydrogen and oxygen are stored separately above and below the rear pressure shell to avoid contact with the shell. In the event of an explosion, the pressure shell used to withstand water pressure can serve as a device to protect the occupants.

However, although the design of the hybrid hull ensures safety, it increases the difficulty and cost of construction. On the exported Type 214 and subsequent Dolphin II submarines, Germany returned to single-hull construction, and the entire hull was greatly elongated. Hydrogen and oxygen storage facilities are placed inside the pressure hull.

Compared with the Stirling engine, the fuel cell AIP has very low noise due to almost no moving parts, even lower than the turbine of a nuclear-powered submarine. The omitted noise reduction facilities can greatly reduce the internal layout of the submarine.The pure chemical reaction naturally has no limitation on the depth of the dive, so that the AIP submarine is no longer limited to shallow sea areas.

However, fuel cells require high material technology and are expensive, which is why only Germany and Italy adopted them in the early AIP. However, with the improvement of chemical technology, more and more AIP submarines began to use fuel cells, such as Spain, South Korea, India, etc. Rising stars are more inclined to buy or produce fuel cell AIP submarines themselves.

The Soryu class is a standard Stirling machine AIP submarine, but starting from the 11th SS-511, the Soryu class AIP submarine will use lithium-ion batteries instead of the lead-acid batteries commonly used by conventionally powered submarines.That is to say, the battery that actually drives a submarine with an underwater displacement of 4200 tons is the same as that of a mobile phone and a laptop.

The advantage of lithium-ion batteries is that their energy density is several times that of lead-acid batteries, that is, under the same mass and volume, the energy stored in lithium-ion batteries is much higher than that of lead-acid batteries, and the charging speed of lithium-ion batteries is also faster than that of lead-acid batteries. Quick, going to the submarine means that the endurance can be greatly improved without starting the Stirling engine, and the charging time on the surface can be reduced.

For the Soryu class, which has batteries in the middle of the hull, the improvement of replacing lithium-ion batteries will be so considerable that the removal of the Stirling engine will return to the "diesel-electric submarine", and the remaining space will be placed for more The battery, on the contrary, will increase the battery life.

However, he can be regarded as the pioneer of lithium battery technology submarines, but it is their China that really carried forward this technology. Wang Feng's improved safe lithium battery not only greatly increased the capacity of lithium batteries, but also greatly improved the safety of lithium batteries. sex.

In this way, the endurance and endurance speed of conventional power boats have been greatly improved, and there are almost no opponents in the offshore, which is of great significance to them.

The latest lithium-ion battery submarines plus the latest submarine-launched cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles almost increase the strike radius to more than one level.

Of course, this is still the lithium battery version.

After Wang Feng's decay acceleration device was invented, the battery life of lithium batteries was not enough.

The decay acceleration power generation device with the same volume has much greater power than lithium batteries, not to mention the battery life, which is almost in units of years.

As long as the soldiers have no objections, they can lurk underwater almost all year round, and the submarine has sufficient power, which means that the living conditions above will be greatly improved.

However, some people still hold different opinions on whether to apply this latest technology to submarines, and the reason is very simple.

First of all, is it necessary to build such an ocean-going submarine when we already have nuclear-powered submarines?

After all, the cost of this thing is not that much compared to a nuclear power plant, but its reliability has not been tested, which makes people feel guilty.

Another point is that they are negotiating with various countries on the export of spent fuel processing devices to unlock some embargoed products under the Geneva Convention. If they develop military technology at this time, will it cause unnecessary trouble? Can you take it easy?
(End of this chapter)