Help at sea

[SteminDemon13]

Sailor Steve, the Nimitz Class Carriers Have Motor Generator Sets aside from the SSTG's, that generate electricity. Very redundant setup they have.

[kikn79]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I agree with Seafarer on the weight. The manual says:

They are quite large. Here's a pic of the one in the museum at Manitowoc, WI.




Chuck

[SteminDemon13]

nice photo kikn. Never seen one until now, thanks

[seafarer]

Originally Posted by SteminDemon13

Sailor Steve, the Nimitz Class Carriers Have Motor Generator Sets aside from the SSTG's, that generate electricity. Very redundant setup they have.

You mean like these - http://www.horlick.com/products.asp?cat=64 ?

Note that the motor driving these generators requires it's own, outside power source. Nothing's free in this world, especially energy

[rrmelend]

Searching for the the sea-going tug Conestoga in May 1921, the R-14 ran out of fuel southeast of Hawaii. Sails were made by sewing blankets and mattress covers together forming sails. The submarine arrived in Hilo, Hawaii on May 15 after 5 days under sail.

So why does it look like the guy in the front on the right is on a cell phone? :rotfl:

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by kikn79

They are quite large. Here's a pic of the one in the museum at Manitowoc, WI.




Chuck

Cool but uh again what is this cells Voltage and Ah rating ?

Phew I can imagine the mess it would make if that thing got shorted out.

[seafarer]

found this at http://yarchive.net/mil/submarine_battery.html

From: Jim Christley <jchris@bbn.com>
Newsgroups: sci.military.naval
Subject: Re: Seawolf vs. NSSN
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 12:43:59 -0500

Folks:

Just a quick run-down of information as a data point.

Single battery, 126 cells, lead acid, submarine type

Nominal numbers
Voltage range 210 to 355 volts
Amperage capacity depended on discharge rate due to
surface sulfation and total sulfation, electrolyte layering
and temperature.

1 Hour rate aprox 5000 Amps (5000 amp hours)
3 Hour rate aprox 2500 Amps (7500 amp hours)
10 Hour rate aprox 1000 Amps (10000 amps hours)

Bus work in the well as intercell connectors had to carry full load
current. From the well to the distribution/isolation breakers were
cable bundles.

Nuclear submarines (US) have one battery
Fleet diesel submarines (Gato,Balao,Tench Class) had two such batteries
Guppy II and Guppy III had four such batteries.

Each battery can be connected in series or parallel for greater
voltage/current capacity.

Shaft proplsion motors (slow speed non-reduction gear type) on diesel
electric submarines (Gato,Balao,Tench Class) had four (two per shaft)
and these could be connected in series or parallel. Thus there was
range of propulsion battery/motor combinations for speed/endurance.

Regards
Jim Christley

I know that on Royal Navy subs, the command "group up" was to shift the batteries (RN subs had 2 to 4 batteries, I think) from series to parallel for speed runs. This posting makes me believe that US boats had a similar arrangement.

[kikn79]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Cool but uh again what is this cells Voltage and Ah rating ?

Phew I can imagine the mess it would make if that thing got shorted out.

I have heard that each cell was only about 3 volts. Not much power, but when you have 126 cells in each battery, it makes up for each cell not being that strong.

From the label above the pic:

World War II Submarine Exide Battery Cell
The batteries on board World War II fleet submarines were extremely important. Because the engines could not run under water, submarines relied solely on battery power while submerged. Submarine batteries were manufactured for the U.S. Navy by both the Gould Storage Battery Co, and the Exide Corporation.

Each submarine had two batteries, each made up of 126 cells. The forward battery was located beneath the Officer's Quarters and Mess, and the after battery sat beneath the Creww's Quarters and Mess. Each battery consisted of 6 rows of 21 cells each. All the cells were connected in a series to produce the electricity.

Each cell, like this one, was about 4 1/2 feet tall, 1 1/2 feet deep and 1 3/4 feet wide. Each also weighed about 1,650 lbs and was encased in its own acid-proof rubber jar as a precaution against leakage. This encasement was essential because the cells were made up of two kinds of lead plates immersed in sulfuric acid. Since sulfuric acid is highly corrosive, it was important to make sure that there were no undetected leaks which could allow acid to seep out and weaken the boat's hull. The battery cells also had to be properly sealed to prevent salt water from mixing with the sulfuric acid and producing chlorine gas, which could be deadly to the crew.

Chuck

[SteamWake]

So they were typically 300Volt DC in the 1,000 Ah range.

300KW pretty damn impressive espically for DC (Im not going to break down into DC vs AC power factors and phase angles blah blah)

This makes perfect sense as the set ups were more or less a rip off of diesel electric locomotive powertrains.

The shifting from series to parallel would change the Voltage / Current aspect.

Briefly as the voltage goes up the current goes down. DC motors are curious beasts and tend to run better at higher currents at lower voltages wherein there cousins the AC motor is just the opposite. That is as long as that current is available. Its a vicous cycle though as the overall voltage begins to fall due to lack of charge the current draw goes up inversely. You soon hit a point where the cells can no longer provide that amount of current and the voltage drops even more. This is why a boat with fully charged batteries could make lets say 12 knots at all ahead full. When the batteries are discharged and not changing the 'throttle' youll be lucky to wring out 8 knots at twice the current draw. So less speed and faster discharge. The law of diminishing returns.

BTW DC motors are more efficent than AC motors but maintance and construction costs are far greater for the DC motors while AC motors tend to be more compact which explains why typical AC units utilize AC motors.

[-Pv-]

Interesting discussion, but to answer the original question, unless the UBI devs modify the game beyond what we know about for patch 1.4 at this time, you only have limited options:

Revert to a save game.
Modifiy your game save to give you unlimited fuel or undamaged components.
Do the best you can at minimum depth and battery speed.
Try any of the other more humorous solutions offered.

I'm pretty sure we've determined as long as there was diesel, WWII fleet boats had the equipment and expertise to come up with innovative propulsion solutions. Without fuel, as long at the transit was realatively short, even tradtional solutions could be employed (when nature cooperates.)

Another turn on the argument is what are we really asking the devs to do? What we are batting around here is the question "what consitutes game end?"

Are there conditions other than destruction and death where we can consider the player has failed in the mission to preserve a battle worthy or transit-worthy engine of war?
There are many vessel components in the sim most of which can have partial damage of various sorts which I assume triggers limited effectiveness in the code for those components.
There are some components when fully disabled make the game difficult (or meaningless) to continue but for one aspect- willingness to spend the time to return to port and repair or get a new sub, then continue the battle. Loss of guns, crew members, pariscopes, radar, radio, etc. obviously fall into a different class than propulsion.

Once mobility is lost, it becomes a different game. Completely pointless to continue in terms of adding to your tonnage score. Loss of the rudder is another show stopper. We then come to the point where we decide if propulsion can and should be lost in some way as a "tilt" game ender. If no, then some (potentially) complex code and graphics support needs to be added to the game which wasn't intended by the devs. Indeed they went to great lengths to explain to the community they decided to have a "simple" propulsion model and have stuck with that decision. You open a large can of worms as players will also expect the AI vessels to have limited or varied aspects of the same system.

In discussing this in detail, we no doubt start the wheels turning in the future decision process. I see a damage indicator being added as a result of user feedback on the "ghost" status of the damage model.

If and until code is added to all but eliminate loss of propulsion as a game ender, the empetus is back on the player to do what I think the devs intended:
Do all possible to preserve the fighting integrity of the sub and crew while carefully judging risk to gain as much sunk tonnage as possible. This decision then to eliminate one of the show stoppers of the game also eliminates one of the balancing factors of the game: risk vs gain.

-Pv-

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by -Pv-

Another turn on the argument is what are we really asking the devs to do? What we are batting around here is the question "what consitutes game end?"

-Pv-

This one is easy. Return the "Return to base" option. However maybe have some penalty applied for its use.. loss or renown and or promotions or in extreme cases an early retirement.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by seafarer

You mean like these - http://www.horlick.com/products.asp?cat=64 ?

Note that the motor driving these generators requires it's own, outside power source. Nothing's free in this world, especially energy

Thanks for the explanation, seafarer. I was beginning to think they were supposed to work by magic.

[SteminDemon13]

"I was beginning to think they were supposed to work by magic."

Yeah, that's what I thought until I saw the setup.

[jazman]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Thanks for the explanation, seafarer. I was beginning to think they were supposed to work by magic.

I think there was a chief engineer named "Scott" on the ship he was thinking about.

[Bulkhead]

Whats up? I have no idea where you get yor info, and get off the question, but its very interessting to read.

Scenario: When i lie dead in the water without the diesels, i wanna be abel to not be forced to end game because i have to dive or set down the realism. And correct me if I am wrong, but isnt this just a small change in the cfg.?

And one more question: The huge battericell photo, are they placed in there own small pressurised compartments or are they placed inside the subs pressure hull?
Is it enuff space?

all the best
Mister-know-nothing-about-subs