Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "SMS König - Guide 307" video.

  1. Most later-generation dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts used geared steam turbines (the primary exception being the later U.S. ships, which tended to use turboelectric drives). Steam turbines (as with turbines in general) have a very narrow band of RPM in which they're most efficient; this is the reason for the gears in the first place, in order to step down the RPM from the turbine's optimal power band to something that's reasonable for a propeller to put into the water. However, with a single, fixed gear ratio, while the battleship can now actually make use of the turbine's high-efficiency band, it still can only do so within a fairly-narrow speed band before the required propeller RPM (multiplied by the gear ratio) takes the turbine out of its optimal power band anyways, causing efficiency to drop off sharply. (This is where turboelectric propulsion shines, as it completely decouples the propeller speed from the turbine speed, allowing the turbine to remain in its power band at any propeller speed.) In situations where an engine with a narrow power band has to drive an output over a wide range of speeds, the usual situation (if you don't go to [insert engine type]-electric propulsion in order to take advantage of electric motors' insanely-wide power bands) is to vary the gear ratio between the engine and the output, generally by using some sort of variable gearbox (like in an automobile's transmission). Did any battleships use variable-ratio gearboxes to keep their turbines spinning in their most-efficient speed bands over a wide range of propeller speeds? If not, why not?
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