Chapter 853 New Domestic Frigate
What surprised Chang Haonan was that Dock No. 2 was indeed quite different from the "dock" he had in his past concept.
Not only is it hidden under the roof, it is even located completely on the ground at a distance from the sea.
It is not difficult to see from the surrounding structures that after the boat is built, it must pass through a specific slide rail to be launched into the water.
This design determines that the No. 2 dock cannot build ships that are too large.
Of course, the advantage is that not only can we guard against satellite reconnaissance from overhead, but even ships passing by in the nearby channel will not be able to see what is happening inside the dock.
Perhaps noticing Chang Haonan's strange look, Lin Qing started to explain:
"Originally, if we use the traditional tower shipbuilding method, we must put the dock on the shore. However, the Jiangnan Shipyard next door started to introduce segmented shipbuilding when building the 052. Hudong hopes to practice this on the 054, so we built this No. 2 dock on the ground."
"At that time, the Hudong Shipyard was producing an improved version of the 053H2G frigate for the Pakistani Navy. The original plan was to start using the new technology from the No. 4 ship. However, in 98, as you know, the international situation changed a lot, so the first three ships were handed over to our navy, and the No. 4 ship was not built..."
Lin Qing said that the "053H2G modification" is actually 053H3.
In 1998, India and Pakistan conducted several rounds of intensive nuclear tests, resulting in severe embargo sanctions on both sides.
Whether sanctions are effective or not depends on the reasons and targets of the sanctions.
Aircraft like the J-7F or some small ground equipment can be transported over secretly.
But you delivered a frigate in broad daylight despite the sanctions you voted for...
This matter is completely exported in the face of the Security Council.
Even Americans can't do it.
It just so happened that the Chinese Navy was in urgent need of combat power during that period, so they were directly exported and sold domestically.
However, the situation on this timeline today is somewhat different from that of the previous life.
Because the design of 054 was frozen in 1999, and the cost is much lower than the previous 054 which required a lot of European imported parts.
Therefore, the originally planned second batch of 053H3 was directly cancelled, and the production was switched to the current all-fuel powered version of the new frigate.
While listening to Lin Qing's introduction, Chang Haonan followed him into the slightly mysterious Dock No. 2.
As soon as you enter the door, you can see a warship that has already taken shape parked on the slipway in the middle of the dock.
Although the former was not clear about the detailed design of 054, he had seen the renderings.
At worst, a ship with a conventional layout can't do anything special.
The reason why it is said to be "taking shape" is that at this time only about the front two-thirds of the ship is complete, and the rear one-third is divided into two sections and has not yet been connected to the main hull.
This is the characteristic of segmented shipbuilding.
First install most of the equipment into the hull structure, and then assemble it.
The advantage of doing this is that multiple sections can be started simultaneously and assembled together at the end, making the shipbuilding efficiency much faster than the tower shipbuilding method.
The first 054 ship started cutting steel plates in October last year. After only about 10 months, the hull has been basically completed.
The next step is just to outfit some of the ship's surface equipment, and the sea trial process will begin in about half a year.
Even for a small ship with a volume of less than 4000 tons, this is quite good efficiency.
Of course, the price is that there is almost no tolerance for error.
If the error of a certain section is slightly larger, resulting in it being unable to align with other hulls, then the only option is to rework it.
"It just so happens that the section that is about to close is near the power cabin."
Everyone came to a relatively high operating platform. Lin Qing pointed to a place at the bottom of the cabin and said to Chang Haonan:
"There are two QC130 gas turbines and the entire power system including the reduction gearbox."
As he said this, a staff member at the back handed him a telescope at a very timely moment.
Although Chang Haonan was deeply involved in the research and development of the WP-14 itself, because the WS-130 project was already being carried out simultaneously when the QC/QD10 was being developed, he did not know much about the situation after the fuel conversion.
Fortunately, Lin Qing and another engineer named Liu who was in charge of shipbuilding were always there to assist with the introductions.
Where is the flue, where is the air intake, where is the fuel line...
In addition, there are shock-absorbing rafts arranged to further enhance anti-submarine capabilities, and exhaust ejection devices specially designed to suppress the infrared characteristics of the ship's hull...
It can be said that although it is only a type of frigate with relatively strict cost constraints, the shipbuilding industry system still cooperated with the aviation industry system to use some cost-effective technologies that can improve combat effectiveness as much as possible.
In addition to increasing the combat effectiveness of this class of ships as much as possible, it is more important to pave the way for the new domestically-produced destroyers that have also entered the planning stage.
The only problem is that gas turbines themselves are more expensive to operate than diesel engines.
However, since 054 directly chooses all-fuel power in one step, and it is not even a fuel-fuel combination, then Yan Zhongcheng must have made some inclination towards fuel consumption in terms of performance trade-offs.
"What were the results of the previous test conducted by QC130 on the power test platform?"
When Lin Qing finished speaking, Chang Haonan suddenly asked.
When the Aviation Power Group was established last year, he had drawn three big plans.
One of them is to develop a 10MW marine gas turbine based on the WS-30 core engine, which will be used on future domestically-produced destroyers.
Two gas turbines of this level can drive an 8000-ton destroyer, and if four are used, 1.2 tons or even higher can be easily driven.
If we want to do a good job in aviation fuel conversion, we must definitely refer to more feedback from users.
"There's nothing wrong with the engine itself."
Lin Qing replied:
"The size, weight, output power, mean time between failures, and fuel consumption are all within the initial design range. Only the noise and vibration levels are a little larger to compromise with fuel consumption. However, no matter how large it is, it is still several levels better than a diesel engine..."
"The main problem at present is actually the same as that of the two 052s. Our navy has almost never been equipped with all-fuel-powered warships in the past, so both the crew and the shipyard are not very accustomed to the maintenance, overhaul and upkeep of the fuel engine."
"Especially after each voyage, or when a malfunction occurs, because gas turbines are more complex than diesel engines, the time spent on inspection and maintenance is about two to three times longer, but these can be gradually overcome through training..."
In fact, to sum it up, although it is not easy to break, it is quite troublesome if it breaks.
Hearing this, Chang Haonan suddenly had an idea and looked at Lei Zhixing and Liu Fangping who had been following behind him:
"The equipment condition monitoring and fault automatic diagnosis (ECM&FD) system we developed for LNG ships before should be transplanted to this frigate?"
After developing a usable manifold learning algorithm, the first application scenario that Chang Haonan thought of was risk and fault diagnosis.
However, this requires a large number of sensors to provide data. Based on the technological level in 2000, it was difficult for aircraft, at least small and medium-sized aircraft, to meet this requirement.
So we first used this system on LNG ships.
The boil-off gas full reliquefaction system will affect the structural design of the entire ship. Even for Gas-Transport liquid cargo tanks with safety redundancy, there are still certain risks.
If the core data of the entire ship, including the cargo tanks, power system and hull structure, are connected to the new system, this risk can be estimated in advance.
For example, if a valve on a ship is at risk of failure due to disrepair or improper installation, it will have a certain impact on the pipeline pressure data upstream and downstream, and even the entire ship.
In the past, it was difficult to find this effect among a large amount of data interference through manual verification alone.
Often, it is only after the valve actually fails that the problem can be fixed.
But with the ability to extract data, targeted early prevention becomes possible.
Similar systems seem to be able to be installed on warships after simple debugging.
It may be too costly to apply it to the entire ship like LNG ships, but it is not a big problem if it is only used for the power system.
In this way, the working hours consumed in the maintenance process will be greatly reduced, and the risk of failure will be reduced accordingly.
From the perspective of the cost over the entire life cycle, it is definitely a huge profit.
