Gasturbines

[D'ARTOIS]

Recently, we got the representation of ZORIYA Gasturbines Mfg Co from the Ukraine.
Although we have our resources to check on the availability of installed gasturbines in non-commercial vessels at present, I still doubt that our info is up-to-date. I am specifically interested in the Yacht- and Government Market.
The topic of gasturbines is raising again since many designers and operators are not at level of latest technology, explaining the little use and application of said engines.
My question concerns the US and Canada. Is there any use of gasturbines in small vessels between 50'and 100' - either yachts or government-military use?
Save for the larger surface-vessels in the operational fleet.
I am aiming at vessels that require 3000 - 6000 hp as rated power.

[Richard Petersen]

I assume you can not find anything is because no one will pay the huge costs and time to get one approved by all the safety and insurance companies. A geared turbo-prop engine is used on lots of aircraft in that range. No marine approval -again? --Luxury yachts already have them. You need to watch more DIRECT TV boat programs to keep up with the latest toys of the rich.

[D'ARTOIS]

That was not my question.
I have all registrations of commericial- and yachts with gasturbines. What I am just curious babout is the US Government market. There we have some, but as I believe cripple, information about the application in ships of units of 6000 - 10,000 hp.
If some knows more about that, I would be very interested to share their experiences.
Thanks anyway,
D'ARTOIS :idea:

[Richard Petersen]

Look on the web-- Special Forces boats-- use variations-- and links. I found the modern equivilant of PT boats. They are powered buy turbines and desiels. It is publick record. You just have to spend 4 to 8 hours of time.

[mattotoole]

There's at least one American company doing turbine engines for yachts. Their boats have been written up in various boating mags in the last few years. I don't have the links to those articles, but the company is here:

www.marineturbine.com (http://www.marineturbine.com)

I know a guy who served on a turbine powered ship in the US Navy. The most expensve part of the ship is the giant reduction gear for the turbine -- several meters in diameter. This kind of thing is what makes turbines impractical for yachts, unless the budget is unlimited. Low speed operation is a problem too, perhaps requiring an auxiliary drivetrain for harbor use.

[Richard Petersen]

Turbines have do not have a wide RPM operating band. So they have poor eff. off of peak HP. There is no airvalve to control mixtures of fuel and air at any speed, except maximum. The proof of that statement is the long time it takes a engine to go from idle to maximum RPM, compared to a piston engine. I have no idea if they can ever do it. Yacht people pay and expect smooth steady response similar to a car. Tough sell,---- if you can not match response and economy of a piston type engine.

[D'ARTOIS]

In general it is the problem with Gasturbines that they are not designed for low speed. Mostly they are combined with supporting diesels. It called CODAG - combined diesel and gas. I have most of the military information supplied by the various intelligenge coy's like Jane's etc. I was actually interested if somebody knew about lesser known applications. There are indeed a number of yachts equipped with gasturbines, as was for example Octopussy, a Dutch design of Frank Mulder, owned by cartrader John Stalluppi. However, the boat was sold some time after her delivery and the 2nd owner took the gasturbine out.
There only four companies left who manufacture Gasturbines, the rest is trade names. Only one company in the world manufactures specialized marine gasturbines, Zorya in the Ukraine. Those engines power about 68% of the Russian fleet. They do not require the clutch assembly also they lacke the reverse-gears. Due to a special system the fanblades can be returned internally, an asset that Vericor, GE and Rolls Royce don't have.

[Richard Petersen]

Mtt turbines has a very good PR SALES INFORMATION writer. NO mention of fuel consumption--- Uses the phrase --turbines are used in aircraft carriers, US nuke uses a STEAM TURBINE, not a hydrocarbon fired engine. Have you ever seen the intake ducts and exhaust ducts or heard the high pitched scream that can resonate out either opening? Or set up a engine area resonance at spot rpm's and loads? They are great for racing yachts and SOME military craft.

[Richard Petersen]

I am depraved. I was watching Direct tv , a special of luxury yachts. It did show the fastest large yacht, powered by aux. turbines to do I think 50 knots. and weighed ? 55 tons? Impressive! BUT- WW II Elco PTB did 55 knots and weighed 50 to 55 tons on 3 Packard 1500 hp engines. It had 5 steps on the bottom. Could run on 1-2-or 3 engines AND go sideways to dock. ON REGULAR if needed. Old ineff. 80' X 20' geezer boat.-----------------------------It deterred Pirates with 50 cal., 20 mm, 37mm, 40mm, 2 torpedos, 4 depth charges, (10) 5.0" rockets, and trainable Mortars. Clay and Skeet also.

[D'ARTOIS]

Gasturbines are only used in vessels that require low weight engines and a massive poweroutput to obtain and maintain high speeds. Submarines are powered by diesel-electric systems or by nuclear powerplants. Helicopter engines i.e. ex Textron, Lycoming etc (belongs to VERICOR GE) are used in fun boats, not in Super and/or Megayachts.
Fast feeryships however, do have booster-engines, mostly gasturbines to operate at high speeds. As soon as high speed is not anymore required, the gasturbine is shut off. The minimum output of a marinerelated gasturbine is 3 megawatt. The top is 40 megawatt p/engine. Vericor's max. output is about 25 megawatt.
It uses about 8-10% more fuel than a Diesel.

[Richard Petersen]

Life has always been a shell shuffle game. I will get you there in 1/2 the time for 25 % more fare. :)

[mattotoole]

Turbines have do not have a wide RPM operating band. So they have poor eff. off of peak HP. There is no airvalve to control mixtures of fuel and air at any speed, except maximum. The proof of that statement is the long time it takes a engine to go from idle to maximum RPM, compared to a piston engine. I have no idea if they can ever do it. Yacht people pay and expect smooth steady response similar to a car. Tough sell,---- if you can not match response and economy of a piston type engine.

Actually the response isn't that bad. If you look at the Marineturbine website you'll see they've been building motorcycles. If the response were that slow, they'd be deadly. Actually they're close, having about a second's worth of lag either coming on the power or coming off. The latter could be really scary. This is according to a review I read. However, I don't think it's a problem for the kind of yachts for which these turbines would be used.

The biggest problem is still the transmission and gearing. A large amount of reduction is necessary. This is not only cumbersome but non-standard, requiring too much custom engineering and manufacture. Ditto for the other problems -- hot exhaust, and noise.

I do think turbine-electric drive has promise, if appropriately sized units could be found.

[mattotoole]

With all the talk about diesel electric drive recently -- and now turbines -- what about turbine-electric? This seems the best way to exploit a turbine's efficiency, reliability, compact size, and light weight, without having to deal with cumbersome transmission and drive issues. Simply use a turbine to drive a generator, and drive the boat with an electric motor.

What about the turbine gensets used for electric power on large passenger aircraft? I'm sure they're as small and lightweight as possible. What's their output? How/where could one of these be sourced? How much would it cost?

[FAST FRED]

On aircraft these are called APU (Auxillary Power Units) and are priced with any jet engine.

Millions not thousands , but they DO provide bleed air to operate the aircraft air cond on the ground and air to start the flying engines.

A source called Trade A Plane , sometimes has used takeouts from military helocopters for sale.

The US gov is NEVER interested in engines and other items from countrys that can cut the supply at a whim .

So Russian engines would NEVER be considered , esp with the senators from Prat & Whitney, GE and the rest of the US mfg base signing the checks.

FAST FRED

[D'ARTOIS]

Marine Grade Gasturbines are mainly applicated in Navy-craft where a continuous output of high power is required; As a booster-engine in Ferry's or even main engines, - and then they come with water-jet systems to control manoeuvrability also at lowl speeds. The watervalve of the Jet controls the all over speed - the engine remains running on full rpm.
The main market for the suppliers of gasturbines are Governmental- and Fast Ferry operators. The yachtmarket is insignificant.

The 2nd remark of Fast Fred concerning the US Government I would answer as follows: A country that wants to fight Governmental corruption abroad, better starts first to get even with their own problems in that respect. I would not be attempted to try to sell to the US Government and neither the US Government will be attempted to buy anything from ex USSR resources nor any other. Not in this generation anyway. The protection of own industries is very well recognised internationally and is only matched by the similar attitude of the French.
The gasturbine market is a paperthin market , mainly caused by the fact that the applicationband is very small.
Also the general unfamiliarity with the subject plays an important role and any advances in this segment of the market are going by unnoticed.

[Richard Petersen]

Just so we all understand the USA. ALL ALL our latest fly by wire jets use JAPANESE BUILT SUPER COMPUTERS!!!!!! We would sell our freedom to slavery, if it made a dollar profit for us. I am sad to admit to both statements. Japan controls our AIR FORCES, not us. I am sure the US GOV. is looking for a cheap supplier of boat turbines. Do not forget MONGOLIA as a cheaper supplier than China. :eek: Rich

[D'ARTOIS]

First of all, do not underestimate the technological know-how buried in utter Mongolia! You would be surprised!
According to computers, I do not believe that there exists a country that is superior in building computer systems to the US, otherwise there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley.
By the way - Boeing, UT, Lockheed Grumman and other related industries are buying certain metals from utter Mongolia. They found out that specific alloys of specific metals were better there, not particularly cheaper, but let's say it carefully, more advanced. For military use only, unfortunately unsuitable to any commercial use.

[Richard Petersen]

The Japanese DO make the chips. We make the rest of the plane. :(

[Richard Petersen]

Power and Light companies have had them for decades. They are called " Peakers ". They use, constant speed, synchronized, geared spool turbines ( turboprop engines ) coupled to generators. Very cheap, reliable, efficient, setups.

[BrianW]

Gents,

For what it's worth, I know that the H60 series helicopters from Sikorski (Blackhawks, Seahawks, Jayhawks) have rather small gearboxs which reduce the 20,000rpm out from their twin GE-T700's (about 1700shp) down to 258rpms at the main rotor. The gearboxes don't take up that much room.

Not that they could take the torque required to push a yacht.

[Richard Petersen]

A helicopter is nothing but severe torque loads. The gears are probably double herring bones, one of the strongest and most eff. for their size.

[Corpus Skipper]

Being a former power plant operator, I can tell you "peakers" are a lot bigger than any turboprop engine. Most are GE LM2500-LM5000, producing 25 MegaWatts and up. LM2500 is the same engine the Navy uses, 36,000 HP. There are other gensets as well, but GE has the lion's share. My plant had 2 GE 7FA gas turbines at 167 MegaWatts each, or about 250,000 HP each. That'd move your megayacht right along! Unfortunately they weigh something like 120 tons each. Also being a former Navy Gas Turbine Technician I can tell you that the LM 2500 has a very fast response time and quite a wide power band as well, idling around 5400 RPM and redlining at 10,200 RPM (gas generator, power turbine turned 5400 RPM), taking about 90 seconds to get from idle to top speed under load (8000 ton destroyer!). They did have quite a large reduction gear though. 2 engines per shaft, double reduction gear, something like 44:1 ratio. The "bull gear" connected to the prop shaft is 9 feet in diameter. Just some interesting tidbits for y'all.

[Richard Petersen]

Thanks for bringing " my " peakers up to the present. When I first heard of P&L using them, they were from fighter aircraft and helicopters. Once they proved their worth, size became no problem. The originals got the name for two reasons. They were fired up for Peak use periods and they were mounted on large flatbeds so they could deliver the Peak were ever it was needed.

[Corpus Skipper]

Ah. We referred to these as "portable power", with peakers being fixed units. You're right on the money with the reason for the name.

[Richard Petersen]

Are we ALLOWED to fill 2 pages on turbines? :)

[Mechaniman]

D'ARTOIS,
If you are interested in marine turbines, in the US you should contact Marine Turbine Technologies in Louisiana. You can get more info by emailing info@marineturbine.com

I am very interested in marine turbines myself, and think there is growing interest. I know the military wants to phase out all gas-burning engines in lieu of diesel. Gas turbines have the flexibility to use diesel, kerosene, or jet fuel. I think for some engines, you can change the fuel control and use natural gas. I should point out that gas turbines are very competitive with diesel engines as you can achieve a power-to-weight of almost 3:1, and significantly reduce equipment density in engines rooms.

I've seen some of the boats MTT did at a few boat shows, and they did conversions on racing boats. One was a 44-ft MTI using two T-53 Lycoming engines rated at 1400hp each. As for Yachts, I distinctly remember an awesome conversion some years ago in the 90's that involved a 92' Lydia Yacht. I recall it had 2 inboard diesels rated @ approx. 1400hp each. It was supplemented by two T-55 Lycoming turbines rated @ approx 2800hp each. Together, the 4 engines produced over 8000hp easily doing over 50mph. I am probably off a little on the hp, but I am in the ballpark.

So, these conversions can be done, but obviously it requires a great amount of money. Turbines have a worse SFC than diesels, so that is an issue too. But that is the tradeoff for using turbines. Besides size and weight, they can be up to full power in a few minutes, and can operate over a wider range of RPM's than ICE's.

Allison makes a T-56 turbine rated at 4000hp that I think would be ideal for Yachts. Follow the link. I know that it gets the children of this prototype go to 5000hp. T-56 (http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/engines/eng47.htm)

[yipster]

i'm still in love with this baby (from a 3 year old thread (http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=449&highlight=allison))
http://www.marineturbine.com/marine_images/marine_outboard.jpg
Engine: Allison Rolls Royce 250 Gas Turbine
Power: 320 hp @ 52,000 rpm
Output RPM: 6,000 rpm
Torque: 425 ft lbs @ 2,000 rpm
Compressor speed: 54,000 rpm
Fuel: Diesel, Kerosene, Jet A
Lubrication: Dry-sump/ 3.5 quarts turbine oil

[Richard Petersen]

Don't forget your earplugs or FLAK JACKET when sitting this close to a unshielded turbine. Some small ones throw the blades out both ends. :eek:

[D'ARTOIS]

Thanks Mechaniman for your reaction, you too Skipster, amazing that GT powered outboard.

Any idea which brand this small unit is from? Oh, I see it now.

It certainly cannot power this one.

[yipster]

http://www.gas-turbines.com/images/allison/250-c18_04.jpg
not to get too much flak but saw another squirt mounted on a jetdrive (http://www.gas-turbines.com/squirt_1.htm) that looks very much like the OB turbine above, they're scary (http://www.gas-turbines.com/images/allison/squirt-1_short.mpg)

[D'ARTOIS]

Wow Yipster, that was a big rioar...... Crazy little machine, in any case thanks for the sites, I could not find this kind of engines within the level of my contacts, I will need in the nest future two of those little machines - a very strange project came on my way and I am just designing the basic hull. connected to a jet, they are definately not bad.....

[decay21450]

Some good video of a turbine jetboat. http://www.gas-turbines.com/squirt_2.htm#videos

[Richard Petersen]

Nothing like hearing turbines wide up, to knock 20 years off your age. If you think normal marine engines cost money? You have no idea what a tuneup can cost.:D

[D'ARTOIS]

Richard, I agree 100%, you know I have still jetlag of listening to those engines.... but have a little patience. In a few days I show you: MIGHETTO'S NIGHTMARE

:D

[D'ARTOIS]

OK here it is. This is just a plaything, nothing else. It is a bit à la Gilles Vaton, although he uses other types of hullforms. I was also inspired by Sean Heron's design and this boat is called after the movie with the same name "Amster***ned". A 1000 hp + gasturbine powers her and with her lightweight hull she real pushes forward. Panelweight is less than 12 kgs m^2 - engineering weghts about another 1000 kgs, interior might come to 600 kgs - due to the narrow hull and wasted space, a limited inside room is left available.
Basics are: 14.70 x 3.50 (ex amas) x 0.30 mtrs.

Due to her high speed, all deckfittings are flush mounted, access to the cabin is by way of wingdoors.

It is only a first draft, and I can save weight using another buidling material as hybrid FRP's

[decay21450]

Oh yeah! Stack comin' out of the stearn. May be the eye-catcher of the new millenium. Like the engine emblems on 60's and 70's Detroit steel. There were millions of Fords, Chevys and Mopars, but everyone looked for that little piece of chrome on the front fender or hood that told the story of what was powering it. Lots of boats. Show me the stack!

[yipster]

D'ARTOIS, its a special, i'm looking forward to some more info and schetches and ofcourse that little piece of crome decay mentioned!
amsterdamned, your not kidding...
http://www.bgvinnovation.fr/BGV_de_gilles_vaton_trois_quart_face_2.GIFGilles Vaton mentions 90 km on this one

[D'ARTOIS]

Joop I am not kidding, a bunch of guys from Florida are master-blasters! :
www.turbinemarine.com ;

Watch the wacky movements of the multihull and the secure straight-on movement of the mono. - they say to get at 150 m (what kind of m) but even at 150 stat. m is already impressing. In the video I guess they do about half.
What's your idea?

(mijn tekening ziet er op papier schitterend uit, ik heb hem ingescand en het ziet
er uit als een vod!)

[yipster]

D'ARTOIS, you asked me...

Sorry for a slow reply; I’ve been busy and sort of hoped others would jump in also. I guess a turbine boat may be an adventure and awesome unique thrill. There must be some smaller naval turbine ships in the country but I believe this is a new thing you’re doing here.

I don’t think very high-speed, say more than 80 nautical miles matters so much as in- and exhaust show, big chrome decals, the howling turbine and record breaker total appeal. I love a cabin but for this boat I think people want open. That’s me but others may think different.

I was warned here (http://www.boatdesign.net/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/501/sort/1/cat/500/page/1) on the forum when getting enthusiast bout turbines before, than again wasn’t it “turbinia” that amazed all at the time and turbines are now common in faster ships. So why not on smaller boats? Richard Peterson had some good arguments like service cost that may be wise to check upon first. When asked I say YES, I like this techno very much but reality is I have to make ends meet. (stern drives haha)

I don’t understand Gilles Vaton's and your ama shapes very well as it looks to me like displacement types. Same counts actually for the Tri config, shouldn’t it be a bit slower displacer or a faster (than normal props) planing shape? (maybe even look like Campbell’s bluebird) The Florida site is impressive, all turbine boats? monohull or wingcat or trimaran is a discussion in itself. Lots of “I guess” and “I think” and “I wonder” here but certainly not meaning to undermine this daring project!

Don’t worry about your drawing, I / we can see through the first sketch you made. Few years ago I entered the www.conceptboat.com competition by e-mail and got a notice that the drawings they printed were barely readable. And they were right, a bit of PSP touch up may look just fine on the screen but horrible in print.

Cant find it back quick now but there is a must read turbine book mentioned in one of these links.
Dutch homebuilt turbine motorbike: http://home.hetnet.nl/~edlvanessen/
And the UK wizard: http://www.gasturbine.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/newpage.htm
Off course a new Rolls Royce (http://www.naval-technology.com/contractors/propulsion/rolls/) has better warranty :cool:

[D'ARTOIS]

The complete casco will weight 2160 kgs = empty hull weight;
The closed cabintop is a safety measurement ; at those designed speeds one should not consider any open configuration;
The designspeed is 100 knots, preferrably more; about 1400 hp is required;
Propulsion: waterjet;
Ama's are not displacement type, will drop drawing ama's separately; on the waterline the hull measures about 3.10 on Bmax; panelweight is 12 kgs/m^2 - cannot get it lower without loosing strength. The hull will be riveted and glued, Aeronautical system - no weldings. Aluminium: Russian military alloy but close to AlMgSi6;
Rivets: gas & watertight type Avdel or Tucker; Glue: Aerodux 500;
Turbine: Lycoming 1400 or 1600 hp;
Fuelconsumption: more than 100 gallons/hr full throttle;

This is only basic, later on more specified details will follow.