Rotor ship

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E-Ship 1 with Flettner rotors
MS Buckau 1924, first ship with Flettner rotors
Rotor ship Barbara 1927
Graphic of a rotor ship, similar to Buckau or Baden-Baden
Sailing yacht on the Wannsee with rotor

Rotor ships are ships of different designs that use one or more Flettner rotors or modifications of the same instead of a sail. They are also regularly equipped with a motor drive.

history

A rotor ship was first presented in 1924 by Anton Flettner with the Buckau , and the Reichsmarine then experimented with the Barbara . Back then, however, rotor drives had no chance against the emerging diesel engines .

Due to the rising prices of oil as a fuel , the idea of ​​rotor ships has recently been taken up again. In 1983, the US company Windship Development equipped a small motor yacht with a Flettner rotor. In the same year a study was carried out in Sweden in which a prototype was also tested on a 6-meter boat. In 1984 the British company Gifford Technology (Southampton) fitted an 11 m high Flettner rotor as an additional drive on the 445 t sailing ship Clipper Patricia (built in 1932).

Well-known rotor ships

principle

The flow around rotating cylinders can be understood as the superposition of a homogeneous flow and a vortex around the body. The uneven distribution of the overall flow results in an asymmetrical pressure distribution on the cylinder circumference. The cylinder thus creates a flow back-up against the direction of flow through surface friction and accelerates the flow with the direction of rotation on the opposite side. The resulting transverse force (dynamic lift) points in the direction in which the direction of flow and rotation of the body are in the same direction.

At right angles to the apparent wind ( half-wind course), a force is generated on the rotor in the direction of travel ( propulsion ). Due to the design of the hull with a keel or sword ( lateral plan ), propulsion is even generated for downwind courses and close-hauled courses. The drive forces of the rotors generated by the rotation and acting across the wind, like normal sails, do not provide any propulsion on in-wind courses and, in contrast to normal sails, hardly on courses before the wind - the area is too small for that . On the other hand, the rotor area is very efficient compared to the sail area in all other cases, one square meter of rotor area corresponds to about 10 square meters of sail area. With the usual geometrical designs, a speed of one revolution per second is sufficient. The direction of rotation of the rotor must be reversed when turning or jibing . The angular speed of the rotor must be increased with the wind speed, so that especially with high wind energy, high drive energy must also be provided for the rotors.

literature

  • Ekkehard Büge: Investigations on a Flettner rotor pair . University of Hamburg, 1986 (diploma thesis).
  • Croseck, Heinrich: From sailing ship to rotor ship . In: Institut für Meereskunde, Berlin (Ed.): Meereskunde . tape 16 , no. 3 . ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1928.
  • Josef Esser: The Flettner ship . GD Baedeker, Essen 1925
  • Anton Flettner: My way to the rotor . Köhler & Amelang, Leipzig 1926
  • Kurt Graffstädt: The Flettner rotors in a generally understandable form . Polytechnische Verlagsgesellschaft M. Hittenkofer, Strelitz in M. 1925
  • Uwe Greve: Buckau and Barbara. The experiment of the rotor ships (= ships - people - fates, No. 20, year 3). DBM-Media, Berlin 1995.
  • Frank Grotelüschen: Torque: Anton Flettner succeeds in 1924, what all sailors dream of: his rotor ship sails against the wind . In: Mare - the magazine of the seas , 2004, 45, pp. 38-41, Dreiviertel-Verlag, Hamburg, ISSN  1432-928X
  • Reiner Höhndorf: Flettner rotor ship . R. Höhndorf, Schwerin 2004, Gadebuscher Str.270a
  • The Flettner ship . In: Marine-Rundschau . Zeitschrift für Seewesen, 1924, pp. 361–371. Mönch, Bonn, ISSN  0025-3294
  • Felix von König: Wind power from the Flettner rotor: boats, yachts, ships and wind turbines with rotors . Pfriemer-Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7906-0095-4
  • Hans-Jürgen Reuß: Flettner rotor ships - old technology for new ships . In: HANSA International Maritime Journal , issue 12/2007, pp. 16–22
  • K.-H. High-rise: STG consultation day “Innovative Ships” in Kiel . In: Hansa , Heft 4/2010, pp. 44–47
  • Claus D. Wagner: The sailing machine . Kabel, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-8225-0158-1
  • C. Wagner: Further development of the Flettner rotor into a modern auxiliary wind drive . (BMFT report MTK 03084, 2 volumes) Blohm + Voss, Hamburg 1985
  • Michael Vahs, Jann Strybny, Thomas Peetz, Moritz Götting, Marcel Müller, Sascha Strasser: Flettnerrotor cuts fuel costs . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 2/2019, pp. 12–20

Web links

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