Navies worldwide are increasingly considering and adopting propulsion plants with electric propulsion for cruise and ship silent operation, and gas turbines for boost propulsion for high speed. These propulsion plants, often referred to as hybrid propulsion, utilize water jets, controllable pitch propellers, or fixed pitch propellers, and have design and overall configuration to fit into naval ships with various size hulls such as would be the case with corvettes, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, etc. Therefore, size, weight, space of the propulsion plant is important, but equally important is the amount and complexity of the associated machinery which must be used with a particular hybrid propulsion plant design selected.

In addition, propulsion design engineers in conjunction with naval architects, shipyards, and navies, must consider fuel efficiencies, machinery efficiencies, weight of all the associated machinery, placement in the hull, first time cost,  and life cycle maintenance with associated cost when selecting the configuration of the propulsion system's associated machinery. Manning levels are dictated by these parameters, and in the end, it has to be realized that the purpose of the ship mission can be compromised if reliability is not high and premature failures occur.

This paper is a more in-depth analysis of hybrid propulsion systems for naval ships of various sizes, and analysis of the associate machinery emphasizing weight and space savings in the ship, fuel savings, cost savings, high mean time between failures, and mean time to repair which in the end results in lower manning requirements and mission readiness.

By the time this paper is published, more than 250 SSS Clutches will be installed in US Navy Arleigh Burke Destroyers, 32 are operating in low speed propeller shafts of British Navy Type 23 ships, and 16 in low speed propeller shafts of Royal Korean Navy FFX Batch II Frigates. At the time of abstract submission, all three programs referenced above have cumulatively had zero defects attributable to SSS Clutch material, function, design or quality.

The US Navy has experienced clutch designs that are ineffective, unreliable, remarkedly inefficient, and incurred substantial expense replacing these with SSS Clutches, considerably more than would have been spent if SSS Clutches had been specified and supplied originally. Other nations, who build new classes of ships less frequently, may not have the operational experience to discern the advantages and disadvantages of the individual systems and components in an intergrator's propulsion system proposal and then select the simplest, most robust and reliable system while still in the design phase of a new program. This paper is meant to highlight these system advantages and help in the design and selection process.


Hidden Advantages and Strategic Leaps for CODAG, CODELAG, CODELOG and Hybrid Propulsion Systems

Division / Sponsor:
International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI)

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2020/volume/84058

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