I wonder how big the starter motor is?

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I would imagin it is air started or has a little diesel turn it over. (little probably a 12 cylinder Cat. )

Those engines burn motor oil aka bunker fuel. Nasty stuff but it gets the job done. They only run on diesel in port, you can't shut down on bunker fuel.

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Imagine if they had a runaway with it. Would it blow up at say 1000 RPM?

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I wouldn't want to be in the engine room if it runs away thats for sure. I bet it would blow at 500rpm, that is a huge amount of spinning mass!

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well considering the thing runs at 102 rpm. It probably hits the overspeed trips around 105. I am not sure how they start those things but smaller ones I have seen use air starters. They are direct drive no reduction gear. To go in reverse you just stop the engine and spin it the other way. Bunker C insint exactly motor oil. Motor oil is cleaner. You have to heat bunker c to about 275 F to get it to flow. Its about like crude oil. I have been on ships that used it. It is okay untill you have to go clean one of the bunker tanks out then it gets ugly.

Tell us more. I've always been interested in big diesel engines. For example those two beautiful submarine engines in the German war movie "Das Boot".

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1983 300-D turbo
1985 300-D turbo
1959 Harley Panhead chopper
1929 Ford coupe restored
I hang out with Boneheaddoctor at Schuman Automotive OBK#5
All liberals are mattoids but not all mattoids are liberal.

Well I am not sure about all of them but I know some had Man Diesels, I am sure they used different brands because how many they made and being a time of war. I m not sure exactly how the shafts are hooked up I know they arent a strictly diesel electric drive because when surfaced they could go so much faster than when submerged. I assume they had a clutch on the engine so when they surfaced they could engauge the diesels and shut down the electric motors.
In a normal diesel electric drive. The engines arent hooked to the shafts in anyway and just run a generator, then electric motors turn the shafts. A lot of cruise ships are diesel electric drive. I have been on a couple. They are nice for manuvering. When you have a diesel hooked straight to the shafts you have a min rpm when you engauge the engines. On a diesel electric drive there is no min. You can put 1 rpm on it if you want.

Diesel electric drives are cheaper and faster to make also. You dont need a reduction gear which is the mose expensive part of the ship. A lot of the old liberty ships used electric motors for propulsion except they used a boiler and turbine to make electricity.
I am not sure if there is anything in there that you wanted to know but if you want to know more just ask.
A good book about uboats is Iron Coffin by John Mannock. He is pretty accurate unlike a lot of the other ship related books I have read.

One funny thing I saw on a naval diesel once- it was a 2stroke with 2 crankshafts, 6 (or 8 cylidners, I forgot) and double that in pistons- Each power stroke drove one piston upward and the other piston downward. The cranks were geared/chained (forget) and one had the supercharger attaached, the other crank was attached to the **classified**kW generator.
This sounds like a neat trick to get more power out of an Internal combusion engine, but space-inefficient and complex. It used air to start also (400psi would spin that thing as fast as it needed to run...)
speed control was "teh suck", that thing would wander frequency up and down 1hz sometimes...sucks if you gotta connect it to another more stable AC generator... it was fully mechanical, IP, speed regulation... now I wonder how cool a common rail injection setup would work...

navy/submariner joke- maybe then, the coners' junk would work better/start quicker than the nuke's stuff =) =) =)

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That's a Fairbanks-Morse Opposed Piston diesel engine. They are in widespread use as a marine powerplant and were recently chosen as the marine powerplant for the Navy's latest littoral warfare vessel. US Coast Guard 140' icebreaking tugs (WTGB) use a pair of F-Ms on generators in a diesel-electric configuration to power a single motor which turns the ship's wheel.

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There are all kinds of interesting setups they have used. I have seen some real odd ball stuff in training books. Of all the ships I have been on thought the only setups I have seen for Diesels is either a V or inline. I own a V-8 Diesel now and would gladly trade it for an inline

It has been posted before...and I followed up....but anyway!

I work for the company that makes that engine - or should I say designed that engine. Today almost all large 2-stroke engines like that are "license built" in that Hyundai or, in the case of this particular engine featured on that web site, Hanjin (Korea Heavy Industries), or any of many other such companies around the world, builds the engine to our design. The assembly photos are of a 10 cylinder unit with a bore of 96 cm , the photo at the end is a different engine (12 cylinders, same 96 cm bore) built in Japan. We design the engine, the licensee company builds it.

These engines are started with compressed air at 435 psig (30 barg). Air is let into the engine thru a special valve in the cylinder head and presses directly on the piston. There is an air distributor which, when the piston reaches the bottom of the stroke, changes the air inlet to another cylinder. If you put 435 psig on to a piston which is 96 cm (~38") in diameter, a little bit of math tells you that you have almost 500,000 lbs of force on that piston. Do the math - it's surprising what a little compressed air can do. Of course the pressure drops once the piston starts down, etc. etc.

So you can actually start one of these engines with an itty bitty air compressor, and a BIG air tank. It just takes a good bit of time to fill the air tank!

And by the way, we just sold the first pair of 14 cylinder engines, rated at approximately 108,000 HP each - previously the largest actually sold was the 12 cylinder. They will go (1 per ship) in a pair of VERY large container ships.

These engines do run on No. 6 fuel oil, aka Bunker fuel oil, aka heavy fuel oil, which does have to be heated to roughly 250F to obtain the correct viscosity for injection (actual temperature depends how bad the fuel is). Normally the engines can start and stop on this fuel as it is kept circulating hot even when the engine is stopped. But for long shutdowns and cold starts, we do use diesel fuel.

And R Leo is correct on the Fairbanks Morse OP engine. Used in WWII subs it is still in production today. But it only goes to about 4000 HP or so - a mere pipsqueak!

Rgds,
Chris W.
I eat, sleep, and breathe big diesels...

Chris W. Prior to seeing the pictures of this engine, the largest engine I ever saw was a Hamilton two-cycle, double acting ten cylinder diesel. Bore is 24" by 36" stroke. 875 full load brake hp per cylinder at 167 rpm. This thing was an old timer. When I worked in AK there were a couple of old Fairbanks apart at an abandoned power plant. One had the heads off and I stood inside the cylinder. I wish I would have had my camera along. Me standing inside an engine would have made a neat pic.

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1983 300-D turbo
1985 300-D turbo
1959 Harley Panhead chopper
1929 Ford coupe restored
I hang out with Boneheaddoctor at Schuman Automotive OBK#5
All liberals are mattoids but not all mattoids are liberal.

When you go into the crankcase to inspect the bearings and crankshaft of the big 2-strokes...

Keeps that pesky dripping oil out of your hair.

Rgds,
Chris W.

Hello Chris W.
I was wondering if you knew how big the very large container ships are. What will their operating speed be? I have seen some some of the big 1000+ footers out there doing 25 Knots. They are awsome watching something that big shooting out a rooster tail. Last year in Singapore I got to see one of the big Maersk ships in dry dock. It was something else. It had 3 bow thrusters 2 stern thrusters and the screw looked like it was 30 feet tall. I rode with one of the Ableseaman on there and he said the did 24 knots. I wouldnt know what to do on somthing like that. The larges ship I have been on was 700 feet and did 18 knots. I know on a lot of the new far east only ships they dont even care about it fitting in the Panama Canal. They will make them big enough to figure out why they quit making the ULCC'S (Ultra Large Crude Carriers)

Their is a formula to figure out the max hull speed for a displacement hull; but off the top of my head I don't know it.

Now aircraft carriers are fast, I think the official top speeds are secret but I am thinking in the 50 knot range! That would be a sight seeing a 1,100ft long ship doing 50 knots and they can turn to.

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1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200