We live in a globalized world, and ships, which play an important role in trade, have the advantage of being able to carry a lot of cargo at once. However, they are slow and time-consuming, so spiral propellers were developed to improve this. Different types of propellers are used for different ships and situations, and they have contributed greatly to the efficiency of the shipping industry.
Today, we live in a globalized world. As trade with other countries becomes more frequent, countries around the world are conducting trade according to their own interests. Trade between countries is carried out in many ways, and one of the main ways is through ships. Comparing ships to other means of trade, they have the advantage of being able to carry a large amount of cargo at once, but the disadvantage is that they are slow and take a long time to travel. To improve these disadvantages, people have invented various propulsion technologies and devices, such as oars and sails, since the earliest days of ship use.
The development of propulsion changed the history of maritime trade. Early oars and sails brought great advances to maritime trade, but they were limited by their reliance on wind and ocean currents. Rapid advances in propulsion technology from the mid-1800s onward, coupled with changing trade conditions, led to the development of the spiral propeller, which is still the most common propulsion device used today. The increased propulsion of ships helped expand the scale and scope of trade, which in turn fueled the global economy.
With so many different sizes, types, and uses for ships around the world, the types of propellers used on these ships are equally diverse. In this article, we’ll give you some background on how spiral propellers came into existence and briefly introduce you to some of the different types of spiral propellers.
The overall story of how spiral propellers came to be is as follows Around 1800, various factors of technological change in the social, cultural, and industrial fields were closely related to the development of the shipping industry at that time, and shipbuilding technology also underwent a transformation process. The following are some of the important changes and circumstances that led to the emergence of the spiral propeller.
First, around the 1850s, there was a famine in Ireland, the outbreak of political revolutions in Europe, and the opening of the American West. After the American Revolutionary War, the United States entered the Chinese market to sell opium, silk, and other commodities, and sailing ships became a popular way to do so. A sailing ship is a vessel with sails that uses wind power to sail. A voyage across the Atlantic could take as little as three weeks and as long as 11 weeks, giving traders at least a few months to react to changes in market conditions. In addition, sailing ships were irregularly scheduled, making it frustrating for American merchants to trade.
One of the solutions to this frustration was to try to make sailing ships more regular. However, sailing ships were very difficult to operate in bad weather, resulting in many cancellations, and the search for a way to reduce cancellations led to the discovery of another type of vessel. It was the steamboat. Steamships are ships that use the power of steam engines to move, and they gradually replaced sailing ships in trade because they were able to operate freely compared to sailing ships that were subject to the weather.
In the early days of steamships, they used paddel wheels for propulsion. The paddle wheel is a wheel that looks like a waterwheel with wings that pushes water backward and uses the recoil to propel the ship forward. However, as time went on and steamships were used more and more, problems with the paddle wheel began to emerge: it rotates at a very low speed, so the engine needs to be large, and it is difficult to maintain. As a result, attention began to focus on the development of new propulsion systems, and two devices were devised: water jet propulsion, which sucked water through a turbine and sprayed it out through pipes or nozzles, and spiral propellers, which resembled a twisted conch shell.
However, due to the low efficiency of the water jet propulsion system (the efficiency of the water jet propulsion system was less than 0.5 when the power generated by the engine was 1) and the fact that the size of the ship had to be increased compared to that of the propeller, the spiral propeller system was used on most ships.
Next, let’s take a look at the most common types of spiral propellers and their characteristics. First, there are fixed-pitch propellers. Fixed-pitch propellers are what most people think of when they think of a propeller on a boat. It’s one of the most common propellers used on small racing boats, most merchant ships, and large tankers.
The second type of propeller is the variable pitch propeller. As you might expect from the name, it’s a propeller that can change its “pitch.” (Pitch is the straight line distance that a point on the propeller travels in the direction of the ship’s progress during one revolution of the propeller. When you turn a screw with a Phillips screwdriver, the pitch is the vertical distance the object travels in a 360-degree rotation.)
The last type of propeller we’ll introduce is the counter-rotating propeller. Counter-rotating propellers get their name from the fact that they have two propellers running back and forth (in the direction of the ship’s progress), and the two propellers rotate in opposite directions. Counter-rotating propellers are commonly used on merchant and naval ships and torpedoes.
The development of spiral propellers has had a major impact not only on the shipping industry, but also on marine scientific research. Ocean exploration and research vessels also use spiral propellers to enable reliable and efficient exploration. They have played an important role in marine ecosystem research, seabed resource exploration, weather observation, and more. In addition, the technology of spiral propellers is constantly evolving, and various research and development efforts are being made to transition to a greener and more efficient energy source.
In this article, we will briefly discuss spiral propellers as the main propulsion device for ships. We’ve looked at the historical background of how the device first came to be, and we’ve discussed the most common types of spiral propellers and their characteristics. While other propulsion devices are still being developed, none of them have yet to threaten the propeller, and propeller technology is constantly evolving. The propeller’s status as the workhorse of marine propulsion is here to stay.
