Doug,
Some good points required clarification - responses inline.

DSK wrote:
Matt Colie wrote:

You are correct about Turbinia. I was told that their thinking was
that this could be an alternative to a larger radius (a problem with
the higher than expected shaft speeds) but still a chance to put all
the horsepower into the water. Turbinia was not the only vessel with
this feature.


IIRC the screws on Turbinia looked rather odd.
Remember, the Wright bros. had to rewrite a lot of those books right
about then because the base assumptions and mathematics were not
correct. (This is the cause of the animosity with Langley.)


Problem: A marine screw propellor creates thrust by accelerating a
column of water. The second prop will be in the column "wash" of the
first and have much less mass to accelerate.


Yes and the aft prop will also be operating in turbulent & aerated flow.
Nontheless it can be made to work and I think the idea of using a higher
pitch for the aft prop is a good one.

Do you have horsepower left over at flank? (Up against the govenor
with less than best admission or partial throttle...)

Wouldn't it be the other way around? Governor less than full advance
with the engine at top RPMs and full throttle?

I have made the assumption here that Ed (steamboat Ed) is running either
a steam engine or a diesel (no offense intended Ed). As such, if it can
use more propellor load, the engine will be speed limited (shut down) -
(either by the governor controlled throttle, an admission link-down (or
if diesel, but the rack travel stop)) by the speed limiting function of
the governor when at maximum shaft speed.

This may sound backwards, but it is how things other than SI engines do
business. SI engines can limit on carburater air limit and do not have
the flat torque curve around rated speed.


Fresh Breezes- Doug King

Matt Colie