Ernst Otto Schlick

Ernst Otto Schlick (born June 16, 1840 in Grimma ; † April 10, 1913 in Hamburg ) was a German shipbuilding engineer and began his working life at a young age by founding a shipyard in Dresden.

Map section with entry of the shipyard location

history

In 1854 his family moved from Grimma to Dresden. Following his early technical talent, Schlick wanted to become a shipbuilding engineer. From 1855 he graduated from the Dresden Polytechnic School and from 1858 studied at the Saxon Polytechnic School in Dresden, which later became the Technical University. Here he completed a mechanical engineering apprenticeship, since in 1858 there was no shipbuilding university education apart from the shipbuilding school in Grabow near Stettin .

1863 shipyard founded

In 1863 he submitted an application to acquire Dresden citizenship because he wanted to build a "shipbuilding workshop" in Dresden. As to his suitability, he stated that he had already built two steamboats for Carl Heine in Leipzig during his studies and that a third was about to be completed. As a further reason he added that he had already acquired a suitable piece of land on the Elbe and already had the necessary building permit. He also received an order from the fishing guild to build a steam ferry. Since he had not yet reached the required age of 24 to set up a business, he asked in writing for a special permit, which was enclosed with a letter of recommendation from the director of the Polytechnic.

He received approval on February 10, 1864 and was able to act. He then founded his shipyard in 1864 on his 22,000 m² property, located on the right bank of the Elbe between Leipziger Strasse and Neustädter Hafen in Flurdorf, an old Dresden suburb that was incorporated in 1866 . The shipyard specialized in the construction of iron river steamers. The bank already had the right inclination for launching and lipping ships and initially served with simple buildings for the construction of ships. In November 1864, Schlick asked the city administration to expand his business license, which was previously limited to shipbuilding, to include mechanical engineering and boiler construction. In addition to orders for ships and marine engines, Balb also received orders for land steam engines and transmissions. The shipyard area was increasingly surrounded by workshops and storage sheds as well as magazines, and dwellings for the company's management staff, known as officials' houses, were also added.

In 1872 he converted the company, instead of "Otto Schlick's machine and shipbuilding company" it was called " Saxon steamship and machine building company " and was a stock corporation . In 1873 an own foundry was built, which also accepted external orders and soon enjoyed a very good reputation. The company took part in the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873, received a medal and several orders and was able to sell some of the machines on display, the boiler steam engine and the horizontal steam engine directly.

In 1869, Schlick finished his work at his shipyard and appointed Mr. Kellner as the shipyard manager. He went to Budapest to Stabilimento Tecnico , one of the largest shipyards in Austria-Hungary, which was able to build larger ships on two slipways. In 1875 he switched to the North German shipyard in Kiel as director . From 1892 he was head of the Bureau Veritas in Hamburg . After twelve years as director of Germanischer Lloyd in Hamburg from 1896 , Schlick retired in 1908.

Act

Schlick became famous for his research into eliminating ship vibrations. He developed a mass balancer for ship engines, which was used on almost all mail steamers and warships with piston engines. Another development was the ship's gyro to reduce rolling movements. This ship gyro was used for testing on the steamers Seebär , Silvana and Lochiel . In a letter to Arnold Sommerfeld in 1909, Schlick described the principle suitability for dampening rolling movements, but did not consider the invention to be usable because the device would be too expensive for larger ships. He published a "manual for iron shipbuilding" and reported many times to professional associations and in specialist journals about his investigations in the field of ship vibrations.

The model for the simulation of ship vibrations in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Production at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is the original model that Otto Schlick made to study ship vibrations at the end of the 19th century. The hull is modeled by an elastic plank. The springs on which the plank is suspended represent the buoyancy of the water. The springs are attached to a framework. Weights that can be easily moved serve as the mass of the hull. The weights on hand are no longer original, but have been replaced by identical replacement weights. A model machine is used to carry out investigations. Here you can see a three-cylinder machine, the shaft of which can be adjusted to any crank angle with the help of a clamping device. In addition, the connecting rods and piston rods on the outer cranks can be removed so that the model represents a one or two cylinder machine. In an article in the “Zeitschrift des Verein deutscher Ingenieure” from 1894, Schlick also mentions a four-crank machine in which the crank angle can also be adjusted as required. The model machine is now driven by a motor, originally this was done by a crank.

In this article, Schlick wrote about the origins of the vibrations: “When a stationary ship's engine rotates, free forces are created that regularly repetitively stress the hull, alternating up and down. These are the mass effects of the machine parts moving up and down. As soon as one of the pistons with the associated piston and pull rod and the cross head is thrown upwards, there is an upward pressure [...]. These mass pressures occurring in a steam engine are only dependent on the weight of the moving masses and the magnitude of the acceleration, or in other words: in a given machine, on the number of revolutions. These forces now regularly occur once with every revolution of the engine […]. ”At the end of the 19th century, more and more large express steamers were built, which, due to their length and lower mass, reduced the natural frequency of the hull. For technical reasons, the ship's engines could not exceed the speed of 100 revolutions per minute. The frequency of the machine's inertia forces, which cause the hull to vibrate, were therefore very close to one another or, under certain circumstances, were even the same. This often resulted in structural damage and compromised the comfort of the passengers or crew.

Works

• William Henry White (translated from English by Otto Schlick and A. van Hüllen): Handbook for shipbuilding for use by officers of the war and merchant navy, for shipbuilders and shipbuilders , Verlag von Arthur Felix, Leipzig 1879
• Handbook for iron shipbuilding: Presentation of the usual construction of iron and steel merchant ships. For use by shipbuilding technicians, captains, ship inspectors, building supervisors , Verlag von Arthur Felix, Leipzig 1888–90
• Atlas of the manual for iron shipbuilding , published by Arthur Felix, Leipzig 1888
• The investigation of the vibration phenomena of steamers. explained with an example , Verlag von Arthur Felix, Leipzig 1903

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Otto Schlick , (obituary). In: Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society , Volume Fifteen 1914, Julius Springer Verlag 1914, p. 102 f.
2. ↑ Schlick, Ernst Otto . In: Personenlexikon.net , accessed on October 11, 2016