instead of smash with big ice-breaker, how about saw and remove ice?

Discussion in 'Boat Design' started by Squidly-Diddly, Oct 3, 2020.

  1. fredrosse
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    fredrosse USACE Steam

    From the first reference Clarkey provided, Wikipedia:

    "These ships must cruise in cold water to cool their reactors[failed verification], so they cannot pass through the tropics to undertake voyages in the Southern hemisphere.[3]"

    As you may know, Wikipedia can be edited by anybody, and Wikipedia tries to keep factual by checking input statements. I notice that Wikipedia presently states "Failed verification" on that statement. As Gonzo says, "sounds like nonsense"......that nuclear powered ships could not function in the tropics.
     
  2. Clarkey
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    Clarkey Senior Member

    I had a go at searching in Russian (thanks to Google translate) and found what seems to be a seemingly quite well informed blog post making the same claim:

    Атомные ледоколы готовятся к походу https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/70005/

    And another:

    Ледовый исполин: тест-драйв ледокола https://www.popmech.ru/technologies/9701-ledovyy-ispolin-test-drayv-ledokola/

    containing the following quote from what seems to be the Chief Engineer of the ship:

    "The area of operation of icebreakers of the "Arctic" class is limited to Arctic waters - these ships are unable, for example, to go to the shores of Antarctica through the equator. “In theory, this is possible,” says Alexander Yelcheninov, chief mechanic of Yamal. - But for this the ship will have to be re-equipped. The nominal water temperature for cooling the condensers of steam generators is plus 10 ° C, at + 25 ° C the power of the power plant drops sharply, but it should still be enough. The point is not so much the water temperature as the air temperature - our control equipment must also be cooled, and now its cooling is designed for the conditions of the Arctic, and not tropical latitudes. If the vessel is equipped with air conditioning, it will be able to pass through tropical latitudes. "

    This seems to provide a little more clarity.

    Now I think we should get back to sawing up the ice into chunks etc. etc.
     
    jehardiman and brendan gardam like this.
  3. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    The ice chunks could be lifted by helium filled blimps, who would then drift to arid areas in North Africa to drop the ice and create an oasis.
     
  4. Squidly-Diddly
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    Squidly-Diddly Senior Member

    brendan gardam said:
    on a serious note, i thought ice breakers broke the ice by riding up on it and using the ships weight to break it. not by smashing into it. maybe i am wrong.
    I remember seeing film of fairly small (compared to current Russian monster) icebreaker in action where it did ram the ice, ride up then come crashing down. It was also reversing, then going full speed ahead for another ramming. I'm guessing that was mostly "for the camera" and too slow for normal operations.

    Doesn't seem to be much "riding up", but rather forcing ice down to break it up.

    Now I'm thinking of water-jets to blast the freshly broken ice chunks to the sides and under the ice field, to keep them from quickly refreezing in the path. The jet inlets would be about 1/3 back from the bow at the center (to prevent them getting clogged with broken ice). This water would then be discharged to both sides near the bow, at whatever manner would be best at catching the ice chunks when they are forced down underwater, and blowing them far enough under the ice field that they will stay put and freeze to the underside of the field when they float up due to their buoyancy.
    The idea would be that a just broken path that has maybe 1/8- 1/2 of the pre-breaker ice will remain open and passable much longer AND will be better for ships coming directly after the icebreaker, since instead of pushing through hard slush where solid (broken) ice is mostly touching and pushing against other ice, the broken ice will be "free floating" in enough free open water. I'd expect having even 20% of ice missing (and under the field) so that the chunks are all free floating and surrounded by warmer non-frozen salty water will increase the re-freeze time by much more than 20%, maybe to factor of 10-100x over current re-freeze times.

    Yeah, the outlets would have some heavy-duty protective grates or whatever to protect them around where the bow is smashing all the ice. Might even have strakes near the bow to help push ice chunks down to jet blast.

    I got this idea trying to mix cocktails with a straw. When there is so much ice in the glass that the cubes are touching it greatly impedes the straw and the cubes act as semi-solid, but as soon as there is enough liquid that they are free floating, and just bumping, it acts almost completely liquid.
     
  5. gonzo
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    gonzo Senior Member

    A liquid with solid objects floating on it is not a semi-solid. I am not sure what you mean that it acts almost completely liquid though.
     
  6. jehardiman
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    jehardiman Senior Member

    Ok, this makes sense. As most believed, hotter tropic water through the MAIN CONDENSERS would only limit reactor power. However most ships have a chill water system to cool the electronic cabinets. Fry the electronics, and you are not going anywhere. If they don't have chillers fitted, then yes; tropics are a no-no.

    Now back to ice smashing.
     

  7. Squidly-Diddly
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    Squidly-Diddly Senior Member

    looks like I was almost "on to something" with adding on powered IceBreaking to normal ship's bow, sort of.
    Is this how to make almost any tug an icebreaker? - Marine Log https://www.marinelog.com/news/is-this-how-to-make-almost-any-tug-an-icebreaker/
    But that rig doesn't look like it could do much, rated at 70cm thick ice but how fast???, and says electric powered but doesn't say where the juice is coming from. The tug or gen-sets in the detachable bow?
    I'd be more inclined to have a highly maneuverable icebreaker and make the ship-pushers be the detachable part.
    In SF Bay they use tugboats with tall vertical pushers to spin big ships around. Should be easy to make them raise or fold out of the way on an Icebreaker Tug when busting ice if needed, but IIRC they are well above water level anyways. I imagine if they end up putting a hole in a ship they'd rather it at least be above water line LOL.
     

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