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Rim Driven Propulsion is a 'Silent Drive'
🕑 Added 2020-04-26 15:19:34 +0000 UTCRDP has no mechanical link to the engine room of a submarine. A nuclear powered or electric submarine powers the motor that is housed in the sheath of a pump jet. The electric drive has no mechanical link, just an energy field turns the propeller without a shaft.
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Special thanks to Saturnax for supplying an engineering diagram, and a picture of a retired Hamster Drive Unit. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty adding them to this narrrative..... ;-(
Actually, RO used a Magneto-Hydrodynamic Drive system that used sea water as the propulsive fluid....impelling it along equidistant drive tunnels. The flaw was the length of the tunnels which resonated with the dual electromagnetic fields and sea water flow velocities....With the vibrations variable based on salinity. Soviet engineers were able to partially dampen the resulting harmonics by carefully regulating the length of Captain Ramius' haircut....an effect that interfered with the skipper's medula oblongata causing a Scottish lilt to his otherwise perfect Russian. Coming up....We'll discuss the Irradiated Mutant Hamster Drive that propelled Seaview....
So is this what the Red October used? :P
Raven Coldheart
The 212 A uses only an electric motor for it's propulsion, the Dieselmotors are only electric generators.
Fluid dynamic bearing would be a more suitable choice for this than roller or magnetic bearings. These types of bearing would also be suitable as the thrust bearing.
Robert Sanges
I could envision a 'maglev' concept used as thrust bearings with no physical contact between the surfaces. I have no idea if it has this.
This is only as silent as the roller bearings that support the state ring/rotating assembly, also there will be thrust bearing issues for both forward and reverse
Would such a system only be useful for slow speeds? Or could you actually use this as the main propeller of a sub?
