It's not a matter of conventional power (not strictly "propulsion") being optimal for EM cats. If you can deliver enough power on demand, it won't matter whether it's conventional or nuclear. Nuclear just tends to do this more easily, but if you have enough GTs feeding into a power grid to juice 3 or 4 EM cats and still provide high speed and power the rest of the carrier's electrical needs, then I would call that optimal enough. The key to conventional power pairing with EM cats will be IEP. If we really end up seeing EM cats on CV-18, I would bet 10 to 1 that the carrier is also using IEP.
PLA Navy news, pics and videos
- Thread starter Jeff Head
- Start date
antiterror13
Brigadier
You meant CV-17 ? ... so, you think CV-17 would be conventional power, EMALS and IEP ? ... I think you are right ... I am just hopeful it would be a nuclear powered
Whether it's optimal or not depends on China's current technical capability.
Yes China has mature civilian nuclear technology, but reactor that can power aircraft carrier is not that simple to grasp. From all the signs, I would say China is still 10+ years away from having a nuclear carrier.
I doubt 002 would have IEP, given that much smaller 054B is nowhere to be seen yet. But it may have sophisticated system to manage electricity consumption like Ford, excluding propulsion.
Yes China has mature civilian nuclear technology, but reactor that can power aircraft carrier is not that simple to grasp. From all the signs, I would say China is still 10+ years away from having a nuclear carrier.
I doubt 002 would have IEP, given that much smaller 054B is nowhere to be seen yet. But it may have sophisticated system to manage electricity consumption like Ford, excluding propulsion.
antiterror13
Brigadier
No I mean CV-18, China's third carrier, its first flattop.
IEP for 054B and IEP for CV-18 do not have to be temporally related to each other. IEP on 054B is not some kind of "trial" or "warmup" to IEP on a carrier. That's like saying building a motorcycle is some kind of test to qualify for building a tank. China's IEP technology has already been validated on other ships. It's now only a matter of seeing whether it has been able to develop an IEP system for a carrier, which has nothing to do with the appearance or non-appearance of the 054B class.
No, you shouldn't have said 002, because that would be referring to CV-17:
Better walk before you can run.
It's a long way from knowing how it's supposed to work, to making it a reality; also a long way from powering a ship of a few thousand ton, to something 80k ton.
Scaling things up is a big project by itself..Long March 5 is good example. When you want it bigger, you have to change lots of things. They don't come easily.
Why Ford doesn't have IEP? It's not that they don't have the technology, but it's just not ready yet.
But 002 doesn't have to have IEP, it doesn't have to have nuclear power. As long as it can manage the energy needs of EMLS, it's good enough. It'll be a great carrier that China can be really proud of.
It's a long way from knowing how it's supposed to work, to making it a reality; also a long way from powering a ship of a few thousand ton, to something 80k ton.
Scaling things up is a big project by itself..Long March 5 is good example. When you want it bigger, you have to change lots of things. They don't come easily.
Why Ford doesn't have IEP? It's not that they don't have the technology, but it's just not ready yet.
But 002 doesn't have to have IEP, it doesn't have to have nuclear power. As long as it can manage the energy needs of EMLS, it's good enough. It'll be a great carrier that China can be really proud of.
Again, Chinese IEP has already been validated on other ships. It does not require the 054B to do this validation. Therefore the comparison of the 054B to an IEP carrier is not one of walking and running. Therefore the timeline of the 054B and the timeline of an IEP carrier is INDEPENDENT of each other. It may take longer for an IEP carrier to appear because it's more complex than an IEP frigate, but the IEP frigate's appearance could be delayed for any number of reasons while the IEP carrier's rollout could be rushed for any number of reasons. And if an IEP frigate does appear first, it does not mean we need to wait to see how the IEP frigate performs, because it doesn't make one bit of difference to the IEP carrier's timeline.
Why isn't the Ford class IEP?
The main benefit of IEP is quietness, so that makes you less detectable by subs and for that reason, is most suited for ASW ships. That said the QE class does have IEP. But in my opinion, the question of IEP vs. conventional shaft drives also has the issue of the efficiency of power transmission from the engines to the propeller. Is it really more efficient than conventional shaft driven systems? Converting mechanical energy to electrical energy then back to mechanical energy might entail more loss of energy efficiency than direct from mechanical to mechanical output, even accounting for energy loss due to friction from transmissions. On a carrier or a large ship, using IEP might end up making the ship slower than faster, and you need speed on a carrier to give planes a leg up on lift off. If you are willing to sacrifice some speed for less vulnerability to submarines, you can consider this a welcome trade off. If the designers manage to reduce energy loss and improve drive efficiency to comparable to shaft driven systems, then the speed trade off might be minimal enough to be acceptable in exchange for significant quietness in speed. There is also the question of energy efficiency too whether running IEP or shaft drive uses less energy, therefore improving range, and the question if using hybrid IEP might be possible.
The main benefit of IEP is quietness, so that makes you less detectable by subs and for that reason, is most suited for ASW ships. That said the QE class does have IEP. But in my opinion, the question of IEP vs. conventional shaft drives also has the issue of the efficiency of power transmission from the engines to the propeller. Is it really more efficient than conventional shaft driven systems? Converting mechanical energy to electrical energy then back to mechanical energy might entail more loss of energy efficiency than direct from mechanical to mechanical output, even accounting for energy loss due to friction from transmissions. On a carrier or a large ship, using IEP might end up making the ship slower than faster, and you need speed on a carrier to give planes a leg up on lift off. If you are willing to sacrifice some speed for less vulnerability to submarines, you can consider this a welcome trade off. If the designers manage to reduce energy loss and improve drive efficiency to comparable to shaft driven systems, then the speed trade off might be minimal enough to be acceptable in exchange for significant quietness in speed. There is also the question of energy efficiency too whether running IEP or shaft drive uses less energy, therefore improving range, and the question if using hybrid IEP might be possible.