On the banks of Luoshui, in the shipyard, the experimental steamship "Lichuan" with propeller propulsion was quietly lying in the dock and was inspected by technicians. Yuwen boarded the ship, entered the cabin, looked at the thick crankshaft, touched the cold gearbox, and felt his mood surging.

Over the past period of time, the Lichuan has been tried in Luoshui and the Yellow River many times, and its reliability and stability have been verified, which means that the propeller propulsion has finally been successfully practical.

His investment has been rewarded, and the "speed-up" of shipping will make this era more "charming".

"Father, the most important thing about this gearbox is the transmission gear. Because according to the power balance of the gear set, the first-level driving wheel of the speed-up gear set bears the maximum torque, so steel must be used to ensure the strength of the wheel body and teeth."

"Not only that, it cannot be hollowed out, because the torque it has to bear is too high and must be solid."

Prince Yuwen Weicheng was also in the cabin at this moment, explaining to his father the technical points of the Lichuan Ship as the "project chief".

Like other technicians, the father and son were wearing "work clothes" and "work hats" on their heads, squeezed into the narrow passage between the gearbox and the bulkhead, discussing this device with extremely high "technical content".

Using steel gears to make driving wheels is easier said than done, because it is very difficult to make and process - steel is not so easy to process.

First, you must be able to make qualified steel, then forge it into shape, and then process "tresses" on the edges. If you follow the traditional process, it will be very expensive to achieve this technical purpose.

Too high to mass production.

Now, the production of steel gears, with the steam forging machine, allows people to "knead steel" like kneading dough, and the process difficulty is greatly reduced.

Today's steel gears are ordinary steel. When they are burned red, they are hot forged with a "steam hammer" to obtain a round cake-shaped rough embryo.

Then use a special lathe to cut the rough embryo into shape.

The turning tool that can cut steel is naturally made of steel, and the steel material used for this turning tool is steel that is harder than gear steel, called "arc steel".

Arc steel refers to steel smelted with an arc furnace, while arc steelmaking is a very magical smelting process that has only been barely mature recently.

This steelmaking process can accurately proportion the raw materials (relatively) and "directly" produce several types of steel materials with no hardness.

However, because the cost of steelmaking of arc furnaces is extremely high, the price of the "arc steel" it cultivates is almost equal to the same weight of gold, so it has no value of scale production and can only be used to smel the "special steel" that can cut ordinary steel.

It is precisely because of the various powerful tools that the development of propeller propulsion can break through one technical and technological difficulty after another and produce steel gears that meet the requirements.

At the same time, other variable gears made of fine iron need to hollow out the wheel body in order to reduce weight, but this hollowing is not casually hollowed out, but refers to the hollow design of watch gears, and there is a lot of ready-made experience to learn from.

Similarly, the gearbox's "shift" structure (changing the gear combination to achieve different "speed ratios", and even switching the rotation direction of the last-stage driven wheel, which is the so-called "reverse gear"), also obtains technical support from other industries.

Therefore, it is precisely because of the hard work of countless people in industries such as smelting, forging, and clocks that have been brought together to create practical gearboxes that can change speed and gear.

The crankshaft, propeller spindle and its shaft sealing devices are also the latest technology achievements in the metallurgy, forging and bearing industries.

After this training, Yuwen Weicheng has truly realized how strong the industry his father has worked hard for 30 years is. He finally knows how difficult it is to be for the birth and improvement of the steamship, and is full of longing for the future.

Because ships propelled by propellers go faster than ships propelled by paddle wheels, and even without changing the boiler power and the amount of coal stored in the ship, the modified steamship has a significantly faster speed and a longer range than before.

This means that Zhou Guo Shipping's transportation capacity will be further improved. When shipping becomes cheaper and more convenient, the circulation of personnel and materials in various places will be faster and more frequent.

This brings about the growth rate of national strength far exceeds that of the past.

As the crown prince, Yuwen Weicheng knew what a significant increase in transportation capacity and more convenient transportation meant, so he personally named the experimental ship "Lichuan" and gave great expectations.

Yuwen Wen pondered the name of the ship and asked: "Lichuan...can it be taken from 'Lishe Dachuan'?"

Yuwen Weicheng replied: "Yes, my father is the 'profit river' in the common hexagrams and yao words in the Book of Changes."

"As it turns out, it's such a good name!" Yuwen Wen was very happy that his son was so 'going and loving'.

It is beneficial to the rivers, and the "chuan" among them is synonymous with the "chuan" that flows continuously, which means "river".

Crossing big rivers means crossing big rivers. This is a very dangerous behavior for ordinary people and represents adventure. However, the common hexagram (line word) of the "Book of Changes" is "benefiting to cross big rivers", which literally means "to cross rivers" (which is conducive to overcoming all difficulties).

The propeller propeller experimental ship was named "Lichuan", which is of course a very auspicious name, with the meaning of "traveling all over the rivers". It can be seen that Yuwen Weicheng has put his heart into naming.

However, Yuwen Wen still did not forget to ask: "Have you finalized the existing paddle wheel steamer modification plan?"

"It has been decided that the factory will produce complete sets of propeller propulsion devices for modification, including steam engines equipped with crankshafts, variable gearboxes, propellers and spindles, and spindle sealing devices. This is the so-called 'modification kit'..."

"Each steamship CRRC will organize the existing paddle-wheel steamships under its jurisdiction and modify them in batches. There are several ways to pay for the expenses, all of which take into account the owner's ability to withstand it."

"After all, many ship owners buy steamships by borrowing money. If the ship is out of stock without even making money, many people will go bankrupt."

"Renovating existing paddle-wheel steamers, that is, making full use of the existing steamship fleet, can also quickly increase capacity."

"Of course, this depends on detailed planning in advance, because when designing the standard ships of each paddle steamer, the space and allowance required for future modifications will be reserved, otherwise the old ships will have to be eliminated."

Speaking of this, Yuwen Weicheng became more and more impressed by the overall development plan of the steamship drawn up by his father.

At the beginning, when technicians were developing steamships, they realized that propeller propulsion was better than paddle wheel propulsion. However, because technical difficulties have never been overcome, they could only choose the easier paddle wheel propulsion to implement breakthroughs.

Later, when the trial sailing of the steamship propelled by paddle wheels was successful, and when mass construction was about to be carried out, each "standard ship model" reserved space and allowance during design, in order to facilitate the modified propeller propulsion device in the future.

Now, the propeller propulsion device has finally become practical. The shipyard can not only build new steamships, but also modify existing paddle-wheel steamships. In less than a few years, the fleets of each ship China Merchants Group will be all propeller-propelled steamships.

With the same coal consumption, the same shipping distance, and the same cargo load weight, the time required for a new steamboat to travel will be greatly shortened and the cost will be greatly reduced.

The fleet size remained unchanged, but its capacity increased significantly. With the imperial court, many things were easy to handle with new steamships.
Chapter completed!