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Nobel Diesel

A key part of the Nobel system was diesel technology. In 1893, the German engineer Rudolf Diesel received a patent for the engine that would forever bear his name. He sold manufacturing licenses to companies in several countries, including Maskinfabrik Ludvig Nobel. The negotiations leading up to the deal were handled by Emanuel Nobel himself, “the cold Swede” as Rudolf Diesel called him.

The diesel engine was powered by fuel from Branobel’s own refineries. The engines powered the company’s tankers and power stations. Diesel engines were an important product for Maskinfabriken, which during the 1890s was the world’s largest diesel engine manufacturer. Advanced applications were also developed, such as portable diesel-powered power plants for the Russian army and diesel engines for the navy’s submarines.

After the revolution of 1917, the production of diesel engines ended up in Sweden. It was the only part of Nobel’s system that could be saved from the confiscation of all private property in Russia. In 1919, some of the brothers formed AB Nobel-Diesel in Nynäshamn. It was something of an attempt to re-establish what had only three years earlier been the engine department of Maskinfabriken Ludvig Nobel in St. Petersburg. One of the reasons for starting the company was to make use of the expertise of the many Swedes who had worked there but had been forced to flee the revolution.

One of the foremost diesel engine designers of the time was Anton Carlsund. He had been employed by the Nobel works in St. Petersburg and was personally acquainted with Emanuel Nobel. Carlsund lived in Sweden in 1919 and was employed as director of Nobel-Diesel. He is the one standing next to the first finished engine in Nobel-Diesel's workshop, a 1,600-horsepower reversible two-stroke diesel. The engine was one of the world's largest diesel engines in 1921, but it is still only a fragment of Nobel's enormous system.

The company AB Nobel-Diesel could not survive on its own, and was liquidated in 1926.

The Evolution of The Nobel Diesel Engine

By Baron George J. Steinheil, B.Sc., M.I.N.A., M.I.Mech.E, M.I.A.E. (Member).

READ Tuesday, November 14, at 6.30 p.m.

Chairman: Mr. P.B. Fielden (Vice-Chairman of Council).

From a publication from 1922 from Institute of Marine Engineers.

In July, 1897, Dr. Rudolf Diesel, of Munich produced in conjunction with the Maschinenfabrik Augsburg the first engine bearing his name.

The experimental work to produce a commercially possible engine from the original design took about eight years to accomplish, but by July, 1897, according to Dr. Diesel’s statement, the experimental stage was finished and drawings of the engine were sent to the drawing office of the Augsburg works, in order to start manufacture on a commercial scale.

There was a considerable amount of controversy in this country as well as in Germany, whether the Diesel engine was actually Dr. Diesel’s invention or not, and whether it should be called by any rival name or simply a “ high compression oil engine.”

It is not the subject of this paper to discuss the vexed question, as to do this, references would have to be made to patents, to transactions of various technical societies in this country and on the Continent, etc.

However, it is enough to say that the engine developed by Dr. Diesel bears in everyday engineering life his name, and therefore the author proposes to call it by such in the paper. As soon as the first commercially practical engine was ready, representatives of various engineering concerns came to Germany to witness the tests of that engine with a view of obtaining the manufacturing licences for that type of engine for their respective works.

Among those who saw the tests of this first engine was Mr. Anton Carlsund, at the time chief engineer of L. Nobel, Ltd., of Petrograd.

He immediately appreciated the great possibilities of the new prime mover, especially from the Russian point of view, as in Russia the natural oil supplies were very great and incidentally practically the whole of these were controlled by Nobel interests. On his return to Russia he persuaded Mr. Emanuel Nobel, the head of the Nobel concern to acquire a licence for Diesel engines for Russia.

In autumn 1897 all licence arrangements were completed and Nobels proceeded at once to build their first Diesel engine.

All this happened 25 years ago.

Thus the Nobel Works were among the very first firms in the world to take up Diesel engine manufacture, and among other pioneer firms may be mentioned such well-known concerns as Mirrlees, Watson, Co., Ltd., of Glasgow, now better known as Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day, Ltd., of Stockport; Maschinenfabrik Augsburg A.G.; Fr. Krupp, Germania Werft, Kiel; Carels fréres, Ghent; Sulzer Bros., Winterthur, and others. It must, however, be admitted that the German Diesel engine of 1897 was found to be in many details quite unsuitable for Russian conditions, and the Nobels had the heavy task of re-designing the engine to suit these local conditions. Of the most important alterations were those of the fuel pump and pulveriser. The German engine was designed to work on paraffin, but the abundance of cheap raw naphtha (crude oil) in Russia, made it necessary to make the Russian engine to work on that fuel, and therefore the fuel pump and pulveriser had to be altered accordingly.

In general outline, however, the Nobel engine followed closely the German design which was of the single cylinder stationary crosshead four-stroke cycle type, developing 20 b.h.p. at 200 r.p.m.. The cylinder dimensions of the engine were:-— Diameter 260 m/m. (10-¼ in.) and stroke 410 m/m. (16-⅛ in.). Fig. 1).

Tests carried out on this engine by Professor G. Doepp, of Petrograd Institute of Technology, in 1899, showed that the engine easily developed as much as 25 b.h.p. at a fuel consumption (crude oil) of 220 grams (0-486 lbs.) per b.h.p. hour with a colourless exhaust *. In 1900 a new type of 30 b.h.p. per cylinder crosshead engine was put on the market, built in one and two cylinders per shaft.

The first customers for Nobel engines were the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Co., and the Russian War Office, while the general public and even the majority of engineers of the time looked upon the new engine with considerable suspicion. Several engines were put in the Nobel Oil Refinery at Baku in 1900.

The management of the Caucasian Railways, who were then busy building the great pipe-line from Baku, on the Caspian Sea to Batum on the Black Sea, a distance of about 500 miles, for the conveyance of paraffin (kerosene), decided to install Diesel engines in their pumping stations on the pipe-line. Their decision was influenced by the great economy of a Diesel plant and also by the lack of suitable feed water for boilers of steam engines in the Baku district. The first pumping station at Baku was to be of three pumping sets of 100 b.h.p. each. If steam engines were to be installed the fuel oil consumption per station per annum (4,000 working hours) would have been about 650 tons, assuming IT lbs. of oil per h.p. hour, whereas a Diesel plant of the same power would consume about half of that amount.

Owing to the lack of fresh water supplies in Baku, the question of cooling of Diesel engine cylinders presented certain difficulties, but eventually it was decided to use the cooling water in a closed circuit, the outlet water entering a special watercooler, from which it was pumped again into the water jackets of Diesel engines. The cooling medium for the circulating water was the paraffin, which was pumped by the engines through the pipe line, the cooler having been connected for the purpose with the main pipe. In the semi-tropical climate of Caucasia this arrangement was considered more efficient than ordinary cooling towers. A new type of Diesel engine was designed for the purpose of developing 100 b.h.p. in two cylinders. The crosshead was abolished and ordinary trunk pistons were used. Three such sets were installed at Baku pumping station in 1902, and gradually all the other pumping stations on the pipe line were lniilt and fitted with Diesel engines. By 1903 ten different sizes of Diesel engines were already marketed by Nobels in powers ranging from 10 to 100 b.h.p. per cylinder.

The 10 b.h.p. single cylinder stationary engine was specially brought out to meet the demands of farmers and small power users. Another interesting instalation of three sets of single cvlinder trunk piston engines of 75 b.h.p. each was made in 1902 at the Tenteleff Chemical Works, of Petrograd. These engines were driving air compressors supplying air for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, and the nature of the work demanded continuous working of several davs’ running. To prevent excessive corrosion all exposed bright parts of the engines were coated with paint. It is quite possible that in future, rustless steel will be used by Diesel engine makers for this kind of work. In those early davs it was rather difficult to get Diesel engines t- I t o cv built on a manufacturing basis, as practically even* engine made was an improvement on the previous one. On the original 20 b.h.p. Diesel engine the injection air was sucked from the atmosphere and compressed to full blast pressure of 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per sq. inch) in a single stage air compressor direct driven by a rocking lever from the engine.

This design gave fairly satisfactory results so long as the power output did not exceed 30-40 b.h.p. per cylinder, but when higher-powered engines were produced, considerable difficulties were experienced with this type of compressor. The volume of air to be compressed was so large, that the coolers could not cool the air well enough and not infrequently explosions occurred in the cooler coils and air supply pipes, due to ignition of oil present in the air. To overcome this defect it was suggested bv Dr. Diesel to make the compression of blast air in two stages, by by-passing the cylinder air during the compression period from the cylinder to the air compressor proper, where it was to be compressed to the blast pressure. The air from the cylinder was by-passed at a pressure of about 10 atm. (142 lbs. per square in.) into the air compressor by way of an intermediate cooler.

Thus the air compressor had to compress comparatively cool air from 10 atm. to 50 atm., instead of from 1 to 50 atm. This arrangement, though it partially did away with the danger of explosion, introduced drawbacks of its own, in the shape o'f particles of dirt and carbon deposit, which were carried by the by-passing air into the compressor cylinder, often causing seizure of compressor pistons. Dr. Diesel, Professor Mayer, and the German makers, were greatly in favour of the by-pass arrangement, considering it a great improvement over the single stage compression in spite of its drawbacks, which they said were purely accidental. The Nobel engineers were, however, of a different opinion, which was based on the difficulties experienced with both systems of air compression. With the trunk piston type of engines they introduced the two-stage compound air compression proper, in which the air was compressed in two separate air compressors, driven by links from the engine. In the case of multi-cylinder engines, the L.P. and H.P. air compressors were separate units, but in single cylinder engines the air compressors formed one unit' and the two connecting rods were driven by a common link.

The atmospheric air entered the L.P. stage compressor and was then compressed to T atm. (100 lbs. per square in.) then, after passing through a cooler, it entered the H.P. stage cylinder and was compressed from 7 atm. to 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per square in.). Eventually on large stationary engines a three-stage compression was introduced, the compressors being all separate units, driven by links. The German Augsburg Works, soon after Nobels, also dropped the by-pass' compression and introduced two-stage, air compressors of the tandem type. As already mentioned, considerable prejudice existed among prospective customers- against Diesel engines. They were afraid of the high pressures used, and of occasional breakdowns and accidents, which were in most cases due to the inexperience of attendants. However, after some time, confidence was established, and the demand for Diesel engines in Russia became so great that the Nobel Works could not cope with the orders. Arrangements were accordingly made in the autumn of 1903 for the Kolomna Works in Golutwin to take up the manufacture of four-stroke Diesel engines under licence from Nobels, the Kolomna Works, securing, to begin with, a part of the contract for pumping sets on the Baku-Batum pipe-line.

The majority of orders for Diesel engines about that time were for engines suitable for belt drive of workshops, flour mills, textile mills, and small power stations for lighting purposes, etc. The electrical engineers were at the time of the opinion that a Diesel engine could not be made to run with enough cyclic regularity to be able to drive a dynamo direct coupled to the crankshaft, and especially a direct driven alternator running in parallel with engines of other types and speed (gas, steam, water turbines, etc). To prove the fallacy of that idea, the Nobel Works installed in the power station of the Petrograd Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1905 an 80 b.h.p. twin-cylinder Diesel engine direct coupled to a D.C. dynamo, which supplied current, in parallel with steam driven dynamos, for the lighting of the premises as well as driving of various electro-motors in the laboratories and buildings. In the same year later a 400 b.h.p. three-cylinder engine direct coupled to an alternator was installed in the power house of the Perm Ordnance Works in the Ural district, and this alternator was run in parallel with an alternator driven by a steam engine. After that successful experiment the demand for high power stationary engines became very great and most of the principal provincial towns in Russia, as well as various works and shipyards, put direct-driven Diesel generators into their power houses. The largest type of four-stroke stationary engine built by Nobels was that of 200 b.h.p. per cylinder at 150 r.p.m

The cylinder dimensions of that engine were: Diameter (100 m/m. and stroke 800 m/m. Three and four-cylinder sets of this size were built, developing 600 and 800 b.h.p. respectively. Two such 600 b.h.p. engines were installed in the steel rolling plant of Moscow Metal Works, Ltd., in 1907, one of these engines being direct coupled to the mills. Such work put very heavy stresses on the engine, as it had to work at a constantly variable load from practically 110 load to overload and vice versa. The fact that this engine has done this work already for fifteen years, only proves the reliability of the modern Diesel engine. Another interesting installation of an 800 b.h.p. engine was at the Tzaritzin Flour Mills. The engine was a four-cylinder set with a heavy flywheel pulley between the second and the third cylinders. The pulley was arranged for rope drive. The crankshaft was so designed that either pair of the cylinders could be uncoupled from the flywheel, the engine working then 011 two cylinders at lialf-power. The reason for such an arrangement was the doubt of the owners in the reliability of the Diesel engine, they preferring to have at least half the power than nothing at all in case of breakdown. It must be remembered that even a short stoppage of machinery in a flour mill entails considerable inconvenience and even loss to the millers, as most of the grain and flour in the middle of the process must he sent again from the start, and therefore the attitude of the Tzaritzin Mill owners was understandable, as to them at the time a Diesel engine installation was quite a novelty. However, it must be said to the credit of the builders of the engine that there never was an occasion to run the engine 011 two cylinders. Although the building of stationary Diesel engines formed a considerable branch of the Nobel Diesel business, it was for the designing and building of marine Diesel engines that Nobels spent most of their energies, and therefore the author will proceed to the description of a few interesting types of marine engines.

Four-Stroke Nobel-Diesel Marine Engines.

Not counting a small 20 b.h.p. French Diesel engine fitted into a small canal barge in France, it is to Nobels that belongs the credit of having built in 1903 the first marine Diesel engine and in which the speed could be varied by hand. That engine was a four-cylinder one of “A” frame trunk piston type and developed 180 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were: Diameter 320 m/m. and stroke 420 m/m. The outside view of the engine is shown in Fig. 2. Two such engines were fitted in 1904 into the motor-tank-ship "Ssarmat", of the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co.

The ""Ssarmat"" was a ship of 800 tons D.W. capacity and therefore of very humble dimensions as compared with present-day tankers of 15,000 tons. Her hull dimensions were: length B-P 244ft. 6 in., breadth md. 31 ft. 9in., and draught fully loaded 6 ft. She was built at the Ssormovo Shipyard, on the River Volga, and was suitable for both river and sea navigation. The engines were non-reversible and the necessary astern motion of the propeller shaft was obtained on the Del-Proposto system. That system consisted of a dynamo direct coupled to the engine crankshaft and an electromotor coupled to the propeller shaft, between those two was interposed a friction clutch. For ordinary ahead running the clutch was coupled in and the propeller was direct driven by the engine. The dynamo and electromotor were not working, but rotating simply as additional flywheels and the speed of the ship was regulated by the speed of the engine.

For astern running the clutch was released, current switched on and the electromotor turned the propeller shaft in a direction opposite to that of the engine (Fig. 3). The engine was run at constant speed, whereas the electromotor could be run at variable speed, thus regulating the speed of the ship. The "Ssarmat" has been in commission for nineteen years, having- still the original engines (Fig. 4). A sister ship to the "Ssarmat", named Vandal, was built at the Ssormovo yard a year before the former, and was also fitted with four-stroke Diesel engines, but of the ordinary stationary type, the propeller shaft drive being purely Diesel-electric. These engines had direct coupled dynamos, which supplied current to electromotors on the propeller shafts. Three of such three cylinder engines, built by the works now owned by the New Atlas-Diesel Co., of Stockholm, were fitted into the Vandal.

The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 290 mm and stroke 430 mm., each engine developing 120 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The "Vandal" and the "Ssarmat" were actually the two first motorships in the world, and, although comparatively little publicity was given as to their performance, it must be said that they played a very important part in the development of motor-shipbuilding in Russia.

The fact that the two motorships in those days could maintain a regular service for single voyages of over 3,000 miles long, year in and year out, carrying petroleum in bulk, set many Russian shipowners thinking, and the performance of these two ships was closely watched.

The behaviour of these two ships in service was so satisfactory that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company had decided then to convert the whole of their steam fleet into motor ships.

Such a conversion was probably the biggest one ever yet undertaken, as the tonnage of the fleet was over 650,000 tons D.W., and some of the tankers were of 10,000 tons D.W. capacity.

The programme was arranged for the gradual conversion of ships, starting with tugs and the smaller tankers first.

As the conversion could not be accomplished by the Nobel Works alone, because they were very busy with naval orders, part of the conversion work was given over to the Kolomna Works in Golutwin, who were Nobels’ licensees.

These two firms supplied the bulk of the engines for the fleet, but a few ships were fitted with engines purchased abroad.

In many cases quite good triple expansion steam engines had been removed and replaced by Diesels.

It was expected that by 1924 the conversion would have been completed, but unfortunately the outbreak of the war in 1914 and of the Russian revolution in 1917, completely upset the programme, as in 1918 the Bolsheviks had “nationalised ” the Nobel fleet, with the result that only a comparatively small number of old tankers are running at present.

It is of interest to note however, that of the two first marine Diesel installations, that of the "Ssarmat" with Del-Proposto drive, proved to be more reliable and economical than that of the "Vandal", which had a Diesel electric drive.

The "Vandal" was broken up in 1913.

The replacement of steam machinery in paddle tugs by Diesels required a considerable amount of ingenuity, as the speed of the paddles was so much below the slowest normal speed of Diesel engines and it naturally required the adoption of some sort of reduction gear.

It was out of the question, of course, to put slow speed land type engines, as they were much too heavy and cumbersome for the weak hulls of the river tugs. A special type of high-speed light multi-cylinder direct reversible engine had to be designed for the purpose.

In 1907 such an engine was already on the test bed at the Nobel Works and it developed 120 b.h.p. in three cylinders at 400 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 275 m/m. and stroke 300 m/m. (Fig. 5).

It was of the enclosed crankcase type with a two-stage air compressor at the side of the engine, driven by rocking levers. This engine was the first direct reversible four-stroke Diesel engine ever built in the world.

Reversing was performed through the shifting of cams by means of forks fitted to a layshaft and actuated by the hand-wheel seen in Fig. 5 near the top of the vertical shaft.

Each cylinder had two sets of cams, and to allow for their shifting, the rocking levers of the valves had to be pressed down by means of the long hand lever seen on the top of the engine, so as to lift the rollers clear of the cams. This type of reverse gear is known as Carlsund’s gear.

The manoeuvring lever is seen near the middle of the vertical shaft, and it actuated the lower layshaft, which in its turn threw the starting and fuel valves in and out of gear when necessary.

The manoeuvring lever could he rotated round a dial.

The position of that lever shown in Fig. 5 is the “ Stop ” position, when the fuel and starting valves are out of gear. Two-stroke starting was provided, i.e., admission of starting air was on every downward stroke, as otherwise with a three-cylinder four-stroke engine at certain crank positions no starting valve may he open.

Turning the manoeuvring lever clockwise, there came the first “ Start” position, when the three cylinders were working on air, then came the second “ Start ” position, when the first cylinder was on fuel, and the other two on air, then the third “ Start ” position, when two cylinders were on fuel and the third on air and finally came the “Work” position when all the three cylinders were working on fuel.

This type of starting gear was the invention of Mr. Nordstroem, of Nobels (Nordstroem’s patent, Sweden, 1907). The fuel regulation could be performed in two ways, firstly by a small hand-wheel at the lower end of the vertical shaft, which could vary the tension of springs of the centrifugal governor and secondly by a small hand lever, which controlled the lift of the suction valves of the fuel pumps.

The lubrication of the engine was of three kinds: forced for cylinders and air compressors, by means of a mechanical lubricator and gravity for main bearings, which were watercooled, whereas the crankpins had banjo ring lubrication.

Two of such engines were installed in the Russian submarine "Minoga", in 1908, and it may be stated that the above submarine, though comparatively ancient as submarines go, did very good work during the great war. A number of these engines were built for naval purposes as well as merchant marine, and, in the 11011-reversible design as lighting sets in ships and as stand-by engines in power stations.

In Table I. are given results of official 120 hour trials carried out by Professor N. Bykoff, of Petrograd Institute of Technology upon “Minoga” engines in 1908. This type of engine, however, was too small and of too high a speed to work satisfactorily in the paddle tugs, and therefore a more powerful engine of similar design was brought out in 1908.

The design of that new engine was later standardised, and it was produced in three, four and six cylinder models. Besides river paddle tugs, that engine was fitted in 1909 into the Russian submarine "Akula" (three four-cylinder sets of 300 b.h.p. each at 3T5 r.p.m.) That engine in general appearance was similar to the “Minoga” engines, with the exception that in some of the later engines tandem air compressors were direct driven from the forward end of the crankshaft.

The reverse gear in that type of engine was simplified—the shifting of cams having been performed by a hand lever that actuated the layshaft, instead of by the handwheel as was on the “Minoga” engines.

On the later engines of the “Minoga” type the reverse gear was also altered to hand lever cam shifting and a tandem air compressor was fitted at the forward end of the crankshaft.

The paddle tugs had their engines placed transversely, i.e., parallel to the paddle shafts. In the case of larger tugs two direct reversible engines were fitted, driving the shafts through electro-magnetic clutches. The Nobel Bros, motor tug "Ssamoyed", was a typical example of this class of river tugs. She was built in 1909 for service on the upper reaches of the River Volga and Northern Canal system for the towing of oil barges. The hull dimensions were: length B-P. 132ft. 9ins., breadth md. 19ft., depth md. 8ft. 3ins., draught 3ft. 3ins., D.W. capacity 10 tons, and Cargo towing capacity 3,200 tons. She had two three-cvlinder reversible four-stroke engines, developing each 140 b.h.p. at 260 r.p.m., whereas the paddles turned at 35 r.p.m.

The paddle shafts were separate, each engine driving through an electric-magnetic clutch one paddle only, which considerably added to the manoeuvring qualities of the tug. The necessary speed reduction was obtained through herringbone gears of the Citroen type (Fig. 6).

The cylinder dimensions of' these engines were : diameter 330 m m. (13ins.) and stroke 380 m/m. (15ins.). Motor tug "Lesgin", built in 1910 for the same owners, had two four cylinder engines of the above type developing 200 b.h.p. each, as the size of the boat was larger (90 tons D.W., 4,800 tons tow L. 175ft., B. 27ft., 1). 8ft. and draught 2ft. 4ins.).

The drive from the engines to the paddle shafts was through Dohmen-Leblanc clutches and Citroen gears (Fig. 7).

Motor tug "Ossetin" (Fig. 8) of slightly smaller dimensions than the "Lesgin", was fitted also with two four-cylinder 200 b.h.p. engines, but these were placed longitudinally side by side, driving through Dohmen-Leblanc clutches two propeller shafts (Fig. 9).

The speed of the engines was 270 r.p.m. These two larger sized tugs and their sister ships were used for towing purposes on the lower reaches of the Volga. The first motor tug on the Volga was the "Belomor", built in 1908. She was smaller than the above-mentioned tugs, her dimensions being: eight tons D.W. capacity, 1,600 tons tow, L. 110ft. 6in., B. 17ft., D. 8ft., draught 3ft. 3ins.

Only one reversible three-cylinder engine of 140 b.h.p. was fitted, driving a paddle shaft common to both paddles through an electric-magnetic clutch and Citroen gears.

This arrangement of solid paddle shaft had the drawback that both paddles could only be turned in one direction at a time and therefore for the turning of the ship only the rudder was available. In 1911-1912 three slightly larger single engine paddle tugs were built for the service on the Vistula in Poland.

They were called the "Mazur", "Polia", and "Madjar" (Fig. 10). They were captured by the Germans during the war and used by them for army purposes, upon the signing of the Versailles peace treaty these tugs were returned to their rightful owners, and are now in service again.

In Fig. 11 is shown the engine of motor tug "Mazur".

It is interesting to note, as a special proof of the economy of the motorship, that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company found it cheaper to carry their oil from Baku on the Caspian Sea to Warsaw on the Vistula, via Astrakhan, Volga, Northern Canal System, Neva, Petrograd, Finnish Gulf, and the Baltic Sea into Vistula, a total distance of 3,200 miles, instead of using railways, the distance in the latter case being only 1,900 miles.

Considerable amount of trouble was experienced at the beginning with the above mentioned Citroen type of gear drive, the fault having been not with the gears themselves, but with the design of the arrangement of machinery in the ship.

The hulls and engine foundations of river paddle tugs and boats in general, were made very light as the water surface was usually smooth and the inertia forces of slow speed (25-40 r.p.m.) horizontal paddle steam engines were quite negligible.

With the adoption of Diesel propulsion the conditions become quite altered, as the comparatively high speed vertical Diesel engine with its heavy pistons and connecting rods was likely to set up considerable vibrations in the foundations and in the hull, especially if the inertia forces were not properly balanced and the period of engine vibrations synchronised with that of the hull.

Such vibrations were likely to cause deformations in the hull structure, so that the gears could get out of alignment, sometimes with disastrous results.

The author remembers having seen a breakdown of such gears in one of the earlier tugs, due to the abovementioned cause, when the teeth of the large wheel were stripped clean off.

This difficulty was eventually overcome by a suitable design of the hull and strengthened engine foundations, combined with a better system of balancing of engines.

It is not the intention of the author to go into the question of engine balancing and hull vibrations in this paper, as the subject is too important and voluminous, and it could easily form a paper by itself.

During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 the water communications of the Russian armies in the Far East were very much hampered by bands of lawless Khunghuses, who attacked defenceless tugs and barges on the River Amour, causing considerable delays in the delivery of supplies and munitions.

In order to bring these brigands to book the Russian Government commandeered several river steamers and converted them into some sort of river gunboats, by arming them with small naval guns and machins guns.

These boats helped a lot to stop looting, and even policed the river after the conclusion of war in peace time. But as these boats had log-fired boilers and only a limited supply of wood could be taken on board at a time, it was decided in 190G to build eight new river monitors, armed with two 6in. Q.F. and four 4.7in. Q.F. guns, and driven by Diesel engines, which would give them the ability of making long runs without replenishing their fuel tanks.

The total power of the engines per ship was estimated to be 1,000 b.h.p., which was to give the ship a speed of 11 knots. The order for all these engines was secured by Nobels, but as the Admiralty was in a hurry to get the ships ready as soon as possible, it was decided not to wait until the completion of the tests of the reversible engines, but fit in non-reversible engines with a Del-Proposto drive.

Every monitor got four engines of 250 b.h.p. each in four cylinders running at 350 r.p.m., the engine being similar in other respects to the tug engines of Nobel Bros. Co. As the whole contract of 32 engines could not be finished by Nobels in time, a half of that number was given over to the Kolomna Works, who built those engines from Nobels’ drawings.

The hulls of these eight monitors (known as “Shkwal” class) (Fig. 12) were built at the Baltic Shipyard in Petrograd, and were sent in pieces to an erecting yard on the River Amour, where they were assembled.

The first monitor, "Shkwal", was ready in 1908, and after having undergone her trials in the Gulf of Finland, she was shipped in pieces to the Far East.

Among the sea-going motor tankships can he mentioned Motorship "Robert Nobel", of Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co. (Fig. 13. She was originally a twin-screw tank steamer of 1,700 D.AV. capacity (L. 260t't., B. 34f't., ]). 17ft., draught 14ft.) In 1909 she was to undergo a complete overhaul of engines and boilers, but instead of that it was decided to convert her into a motorship.

Two four-cylinder Nobel-Diesel engines of the enclosed crankcase type of 400 b.h.p. each were fitted in 1910, driving propeller shafts through Dohmen Leblanc clutches at 215 r.p.m. The engines had the following cylinder dimensions: diameter 450 mm and stroke 510 mm. and were direct reversible. The reverse gear, however, was different from Carlsund’s gear used on the smaller power engines, as it consisted of two set of rollers on the links of valve rocking levers.

Only one cam was required for every valve for both ahead and astern running, and the cams were fixed solidly on the camshaft, i.e., there was no shifting of cams for reversing, which was performed by placing the second roller against the cams through a suitable movement of the links. This type of reverse gear is known as Nordstroem’s gear (Nordstroem’s patent, Sweden, 1909).

The reason for the change of design in the reverse gear was that at the time it was considered that the shifting of cams by hand could only be performed on engines of comparatively small powers, and that in larger sizes it would be beyond the power of an ordinary man to shift the cams and thus a servo motor would have to be introduced.

The Nordstroem’s double roller reverse gear was so designed as to abolish the cam shifting and the whole of the reversing operation could be performed in 7-8 seconds. The idea about the impossibility of cam shifting by hand on large engines proved, however, to be false, and it will be shown later that all modern two-stroke Nobel-Diesel engines up to the very largest powers have hand camshifting, without the use of any servo motors whatever.

This Nordstroem’s double roller reverse gear, though not used at present by Nobels, has been revived lately by a well-known Swiss concern on their two-stroke engines.

In 1908 it became necessary to police the communications on the Caspian Sea and protect Russian shipping from assaults of Persian pirates, and therefore it was decided to build two sea-going gunboats of 680 tons displacement and 141/2 knots speed, armed with two 4,7 in. Q.F. guns and four 3 in. Q.F. guns.

Owing to the fact that these gunboats might be called to leave port at a moment’s notice, and also to the presence of local cheap supplies of oil, they were designed with Diesel engines as their propelling machinery, because to keep steam always up would have been too costly.

Tenders were invited from various Bussian (by that time two more firms got licences to build Diesel engines in Russia) and foreign firms for non-reversible engines with Del-Proposto drive.

Among these tendering firms were the Nobel Works, who sent in a tender for direct reversible engines of 500 b.h.p. each. The comparative simplicity and compactness of Nobel design with direct reversible engine installation as compared with a Del-Proposto plant, appealed considerably to the Russian Admiralty, with the result that new tenders were asked from various firms for direct reversible engines. A few of the firms sent in those new tenders for reversible engines, but without any guarantee.

This made the Technical Department of the Admiralty decide again in favour of Del-Proposto drive, as their own experience with direct reversible engines was at the time only with engines of submarines "Minoga" and "Akula", which in the latter case did not exceed 300 b.h.p. per shaft, and they were afraid to take the risk of installing reversible engines of nearly double the power per shaft.

After a lot of arguments the Nobel Works persuaded the Admiralty to adopt direct reversible engines, the Nobels installing them at their own risk, so that in case of failure they were to convert the engines to non-reversible type with Del-Proposto drive.

This was a rather daring proposition, as it meant to the engine builders a loss of at least £2,000 per ship, in case such a conversion would have been necessary. The hulls of these two twin-screw gunboats "Kars" and "Ardagan" (Fig. 14) were built by the Petrograd Admiralty Dockyard.

Every ship had two direct reversible six-cylinder engines, developing 500 b.h.p. per shaft and running at 310 r.p.m.

The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 375 m/m. and stroke 430 m/m. In general design these engines were similar to those of the Motorship "Robert Nobel", and had the Nordstroem’s twin-roller reverse gear (Figs. 15 and 16).

Two twin-cylinder auxiliary sets of 60 b.h.p. each were also provided. The cooling of the engines was with fresh water, which circulated in a closed circuit and was cooled before entering the cylinders in special coolers provided for the purpose. Such an arrangement was considered necessary, as at the time it was thought that the cooling of cylinders by seawater from the Caspian Sea, which contained a considerable percentage of salt, would be detrimental to the engines. In autumn 1909 the "Kars" was ready for trials, which took place in the Gulf of Finland. While turning under her own power in the River Neva the gunboat nearly dashed into the granite embankment of the river.

The situation was critical. The captain of the "Kars" having raised the Russian Naval Ensign before the trials, automatically took all the responsibility from the builders for the safety of the ship.

Common sense told him that to save the ship and his own job it was necessary to reverse the engines, but being a steam man, he had little experience with Diesel-driven ships, and naturally, mistrusting the new type of engine, was afraid to reverse them.

Seeing- the captain’s indecision, Mr. M. P. Seiliger, Manager of Nobels, who was standing on the bridge near the captain, took the matter in his own hands and pulled the engine room telegraph of both engines to “full speed astern.”

Before the usual reply came from the engineroom the ship stopped and started moving away from the shore. The captain, who was rather angry at first with the impudence of an ordinary “civilian” giving orders on a warship, did not know afterwards how to thank Mr. Seiliger for the saving of the ship.

In the early spring of 1910 the two gunboats "Kars" and "Ardagan" were to proceed to their stations on the Caspian Sea.

Originally it was intended to dismantle their machinery and armament and tow the hulls along the Northern Canal system and Volga to Astrakhan, where the machinery and guns were to be put in again. But by that time the captains and the crew became great Diesel enthusiasts, and it was decided to send the boats via the same route direct to Baku under their own power.

Having left Petrograd the gunboats encountered floating ice-fields in the Ladoga Lake, and had to work as ice-breakers in order to be able to proceed.

While under tow, negotiating some rapids on the River Svir, the tow rope of the "Ardagan" broke, and, if it were not for the instantly started Diesel engines, the ship would have got on the rocks.

During the journey on the Volga it was found that for continuous running at full speed the piston tops were likely to give trouble, as several cases of cracking were observed. This was quite a new experience, as up to that time the high speed engines were of a small enough diameter not to produce these troubles.

Two solutions offered to that problem, either to introduce piston cooling or re-design the piston tops and make them of some more suitable material.

The Nobel Works had chosen the latter course in the case of these engines, as the adoption of piston cooling meant too many alterations in the installation.

On the way from Astrakhan to Baku the gunboats got into a severe gale, which taxed their propelling machinery to the utmost.

In military operations

■of 1919, in the Caspian Sea, these gunboats took an active

part. Two sets of similar engines were fitted in 1911 into the

Black Sea Revenue Cruiser Yastreb, whose hull was built at

the Nicolaiett Shipyard (Fig. IT).

One set of such engines was built for the Admiralty icebreaker train ferry Galerny,

for the conveyance of railway goods trucks across the River

Neva.

This latter ship had propellers at both ends, driven

through friction clutches from each end of the engine, one

propeller moving at a time. This arrangement was adopted

in order to do away with the turning of the ship in the river (Fig. 18).

Up to 1910 all tlie Russian submarines, with the

exception of Minoga and -1 kulci had petrol or paraffin engines;

but owing to several fatal accidents due to petrol explosions, the Russian Admiralty decided in 1909 to replace these light petrol-paraffin engines by Diesels, as risks of fire in the latter case would be less.

This was no easy proposition, as the weight of marine Diesel engines of that time was in the neighbourhood of 40 kg per b.h.p., whereas the weight of petrol or paraffin engines was 20-25 kg per b.h.p.

Tenders were invited from various Russian and foreign firms for light high speed Diesel engines, and the most suitable tender showed a weight per b.h.p. of 25-30 kg. (55-65 lbs.), but unfortunately the overall dimensions of all these tendered engines were far too large to enable the engines to be put into those submarines.

Eventually, however, the Admiralty specially requested the Nobel Works to take the whole order for the conversion of fourteen submarines to Diesel power.

Owing to the lack of available space in the engine room the Diesel engines had to be designed of about the same overall dimensions as the petrol engines, and, in order to reduce their weight, resort had to be made to high grade materials, such as chrome, nickel steels, aluminium, etc.

All this meant considerable experimental work, before a suitable engine could be produced. With a view of coming nearer to the practical solution of that problem Nobels had built in 1909 a special experimental marine Diesel engine of extremely light weight. After exhaustive trials in the shops, that engine was fitted into Mr. L. Nobel’s motor yacht "Intermezzo", and tested under actual sea-going conditions. The engine was of the V type, the angle of V being 90°. There were eight cylinders of 200 m/m diameter and 220 m/m stroke, placed four on each side of the V.

At the end of each row of cylinders were placed the air compressors, the L.P. cylinder on one side and the H.P. cylinder on the other. Both compressors had no suction valves, the suction being through small ports. The engine developed 200 b.h.p. at 600 r.p.m. (Fig. 19).

The cylinders were of cast iron with copper water jackets. The crankcase was of aluminium and the connecting rods of alloy steel.

The crankshaft, which was made at Fagersta in Sweden from Swedish carbon steel and tough hardened by Brinell process had a diameter of 100 mm. The tensile stress of material was 80-90 k.g. per sq. mm. with an elongation of about 12%.

The ball bearing camshaft was on top of the crankcase between the cylinders, the reversing being performed by the shifting of the camshaft bodily endwise.

The valve gear and the general appearance of that engine resembled very much those of the present-day aero engines.

The lubrication was

forced. The weight of that Diesel engine was only 2,000 kg.

or 10 kg. (22 lbs.) per b.h.p., which made it the lightest Diesel

engine ever produced.

Very valuable experience was obtained

with the running of that engine, and many points of

its design were embodied in the new engines specially built

for the conversion of submarines.

These fourteen submarines

were of three different types and sizes: Ssovv

class, six boats of Lake type of 110 tons displacement

had petrol engines of 160 b.h.p.: Jlakrel class, seven boats

of Holland type, and 115 tons displacement, with engines of

120 b.h.p. and the Delphin class (one boat) was of Russian

design with petrol engines of 200 b.h.p. Therefore, owing to

the difference in size and shape of engine room, three entirely

different types of engines had to be produced.

The conversion

began in 1910 with the Lake type boats first, and instead of the old petrol engine was installed in each boat one six-

cylinder 160 b.h.p. non-reversible Nobel-Diesel engine, giving

the boat a surface speed of 9^ knots. In general appearance

these engines resembled also very much the present-day aero engines, as can be seen from Figs. 20 and 21.

The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 225 m/m and stroke 300 mm, and the engine developed its full

power of 160 b.h.p. at 440 r.p.m. The weight of the engine was

only 2,900 kg. (6,400 lbs.), which worked out at 18-1 kg. (40 lbs.)

per b.h.p. In order to get such light weight combined with necessary strength and stiffness, the usual orthodox design of Diesel engines had to be departed from, and the engine designed on entirely novel lines.

Thus the bedplate consisted of two parallel longitudinal girders with four cast iron box shaped cross beams carrying the main bearings.

A very light cast iron crankcase did not take any vertical stresses as special run through bolts held it down to the cross girders of the bedplate.

The three cast-in-pairs blocks of cylinders were bolted

down to the crankcase top by the usual studs. The size of the

main bearings was kept as small as possible, and in order to

allow for their efficient working their lower halves were water-

oooled and had forced lubrication by an oil gear pump driven

from the lower end of the vertical shaft at the front part of the

engine.

All the four box girders of main bearings were connected

together by water pipes at the level of the side members

of the bed plate.

The pipes connecting the first with the

second, and the third with fourth main bearing? were on the

off side of the engine, whereas the pipe between the second and

third bearings was on the near side of the engine.

The whole of the cooling water circulated through the bearings before entering the water jackets of the cylinder.

Means were also provided for the cooling of the lubricating circulating oil in the forced system.

For that purpose the delivery pipe from

the oil pump passed through the water pipe between the first

and second main bearings. The lubrication of all the crank-

pins including that of the compressor overthrow at the forward

end of crankshaft, w'as of the banjo ring type, part of the oil

from the main bearings dropping into the rings. The lubrication

of the cylinders, air compressors and gudgeon pins was by

a mechanical lubricator. To collect the oil at the bottom of

the bed plate a thin sheet steel undershield was provided with

a sump at the forward end containing the oil strainer and oil

pump. To prevent splashing of oil the large openings in the

crankcase were covered with detachable sheet steel covers.

In the design of the cylinders racing motor car practice was

followed in many respects. Each block was of cast iron with

heads and liners forming an integral part of the cylinder.

But the water jackets were of thin sheet copper screwed to the

flanges on the cylinder walls. Each cylinder had the usual

assortment of valves (inlet, exhaust, starting and fuel valves),

actuated from an overhead ball-bearing camshaft driven from

the vertical shaft already mentioned. The inlet and exhaust

valves were directly below their respective cams, and therefore

had no rockers or levers of any kind, the cams actuating

these valves through the usual type of motor car tappets (Fig.

22). The starting valve situated vertically between the inlet and exhaust valves on one side of the cylinder, was actuated

by a bell crank rocking lever, w'hile the inclined fuel valve

had two bell crank rockers connected by a link. The design

of the pulveriser of the fuel valve required special study, so

as to obviate one-sided injection of fuel into the cylinder, and

means were provided to push the fuel by blast air in the direction

opposite to that it had the tendency to take. The fire

plate had a horizontal fan-shaped opening, so as to spread the

fuel right across the combustion chamber towards the centre of

the piston top. It is a known fact that in high speed engines,

owing to the inherent restriction in the size of valves, the

exhaust valve works under very unfavourable conditions, as

exhaust gases of very high velocity and of considerably high

temperature go past it, causing the usual overheating of the

exhaust valve. To obviate this drawback, small exhaust ports

were provided in the lower part of the cylinders of that engine,

which ports were uncovered by the piston at the lower part of tlie stroke, so that the hot exhaust gases could escape through

the ports, leaving comparatively cooled exhaust products at

a much lower pressure to be expelled through the exhaust

valve. The water cooled exhaust pipe was connected with

both the exhaust valves and exhaust ports. There was one

fuel pump for each pair of cylinders, and the three pumps

were combined in one group driven from the rear end of the

camshaft. A flywheel centrifugal governor controlled the speed of the engine by altering the lift of the suction valves

of the fuel pumps. As the engine was driving the submarine

on the Del-Proposto system, a hand regulation for the fuel

pump was also necessary for ahead running, a handwheel at

the rear end of the engine having been provided for the pur pose. The starting and fuel valves were put in and out of the

action by the usual eccentric shaft arrangement controlled bv

the starting lever. The whole of the camshaft, rockers and

tappets were enclosed in an aluminium casing containing the

four ball bearings of the camshaft and the thrust bearing

taking the end thrust of the skew gear of the vertical shaft.

That casing had three detachable covers and was hinged, so

that in case valve inspection was necessary, only four pins and

the coupling at the upper part of vertical shaft had to be taken

away and the whole of camshaft could be swung clear of the

valves. The engines of that type had a two-stage air compressor

driven from the forward end of the crankshaft, but in

the two first engines the L.P. stage had only one delivery

(ring type) valve, the suction air entering from the inside of

the crankcase into the compressor cylinder through ports at the

lower end of the cylinder. The high pressure stage had a combined

suction delivery ring type valve. This design considerably

simplified the compressor, but it had also its drawbacks

which soon made themselves felt in service. The air

drawn into the L.P. stage was not clean atmospheric air, but

air mixed with an oil vapour, which usually was contained

inside an enclosed crankcase of a high speed Diesel engine.

Admission of such oily mixture into the compressor was very

undesirable as the oil was likely to ignite inside the air receivers

between the stages and cause a possible explosion in the

coils. To counteract partially this drawback there was a

drain provided at the lowest point of the intermediate cooling

coil, which, combined with the downward path of air in the

cooler, was supposed to clean the air enough to obviate the

likelihood of an explosion. However, such an explosion occurred

in service, and therefore new compressors were fitted

to all these engines, having L.P. suction valves connected

direct with the atmosphere and the air cooling coils were removed

from the compressor jackets into a separate box fixed

at the side of the engine.

The copper jackets also proved to be slightly leaky in service,

and the last three engines were built with thin cast iron

jackets cast integral with cylinder block in the usual motor

car style. Gradually all engines of that type had their copper

jacketed cylinders replaced by those of new design. The fuel

consumption at full load of these engines was 215 gram (0-475

lbs.) per b.h.p. hour at normal speed. Beside submarine use

four of such engines were fitted as auxiliary sets into the Russian steam driven transport Xenia (mother-ship for submarines

of Ssom class), the reason for this being to have identical

engines in the whole of the flotilla, so as to facilitate replacement

of spare parts.

The submarines of the Makrel class had four-cylinder non-

reversible Diesel engines of' 120 b.h.p. installed to replace

the old petrol engines. The short length of engine room prevented

the installation of the six-cylinder engines of 160 b.h.p.,

in order to give a higher speed and therefore the old h.p. was

retained, giving the boat a speed of 6|-7 knots on surface.

These 120 b.h.p. engines were of a slightly different and

heavier design than the six-cylinder engines described above.

The cylinders were cast in pairs, the heads and water jackets

forming an integral part of them. Large inspection doors on

both sides of the jackets were provided to facilitate cleaning of

water spaces. The two blocks of cylinders were fastened by

studs to a light cast iron crankcase having detachable aluminium

covers to prevent oil splashing. The bedplate was also

of cast iron with three cross members containing the water-

cooled main bearings (Figs. 23 and 24.) The crankcase was relieved of tensile stresses in a manner similar to the

160 b.h.p. type, and also had a light sheet steel undershield.

The lubrication of the cylinders and air compressor was by

means of the usual mechanical lubricator, whereas that of the

main bearings and crank pin was similar to the engines of the

Ssom class boats; the circulating oil was cooled bv a cooler

placed alongside the bedplate of the engine.

The cooling water was circulated through the main bearings and cylinder water jackets by means of a gear driven from the forward end of camshaft.

The camshaft was enclosed in the

crankcase and was driven from the crankshaft by spur gearing

at the rear end of the engine. The cylinder diameter of these

engines was 250 m/m. (9 |in.) and stroke 300 m/m.

(11 13/16th ins.), the full power of 120 b.h.p. being developed

at 450 r.p.m. The two-stage air compressor was similar in design and method of drive to the improved type of' 160 b.h.p.

compressor. The two air coolers were separate and bolted to

the off side of the engine. The four valves were on the top

part of the cylinder, the inlet and exhaust opening vertically

downwards, whereas the starting and fuel valves were inclined

at 45° to the vertical. All these valves were actuated from

the camshaft by means of the usual motor car type tappets

and push rods. Auxiliary exhaust ports were also provided

with an exhaust manifold similar to that of the Ssom class

engines. The two eccentric shafts controlling the throwing

in and out of action of the starting and fuel valves were on

top of the cylinder, and each shaft controlled two cylinders by

means of a small hand lever, seen near the top between the

cylinder blocks. In order to assist the ventilation of the

crankcase, part of the cylinder suction working air was taken

from the crankcase, suitable baffle plates having been provided

to prevent lubricating oil being- sucked into the cylinders.

For this purpose three copper pipes having a number of slots,

connected the inlet valve chambers with the crankcase. A

similar arrangement was also provided in the 160 b.li.p.

engines of the Ssovi type. The four fuel pumps were grouped

together between the two cylinder blocks above the camshaft

from which they were driven. A band lever at the rear end

of the engine controlled through suitable gearing the amount

of fuel delivered by the fuel pumps to the cylinders. To prevent

racing of the engine a centrifugal governor of the Jahns’

type was driven from the rear end of the engine. In the case

of both types of engines (120 b.h.p. and 160 b.h.p.) the uncooled

pistons were of cast iron, having five piston rings and

no scraper rings at the lower end of the piston skirt. The connecting

rods of I. section were forgings of nickel steel,

machined all over, while the chrome-nickel steel crankshafts

were machined from the solid. The fuel consumption of that

120 b.h.p. ennine was 215 gram (0-475 lbs.) per b.h.p. and

the weight of the complete engine 3,220 kg. (7,100 lbs.) or

26-8 kg. (59 lbs.) per b.h.p. Besides submarines, this size of

engine was put in several small minelayers, tugs and in the

revenue cruiser Control of the Baku Custom House. The

overall dimensions of that ship were: length B.P. 72ft. Oins,

breadth md. 14ft., depth md. 6ft. 6ins., and loaded draught

3ft. 3ins. The engine of the submarine Delphin was a combination

of designs of the 160 b.h.p. and 120 b.h.p. types. It

was a six cylinder noil-reversible set of the same cylinder

dimensions as the 120 b.h.p. type (D = 250 m/m. (9|ins.) x S =

300 (11 13/ 16th ins.) but of slightly higher piston speed, the

r.p.m. being 500, which gave it a power output of 220 b.h.p.

(Figs. 25 and 26). The cylinder design as well as that of the

bedplate, crankshaft, connecting rods, piston and compressor

was similar to the 120 b.h.p. type, but the valves, though in

arrangement similar to the above-mentioned type, were actuated by rockers from an overhead camshaft driven from an inclined shaft at the rear of the engine. This camshaft was not of the hinged type, but was supported on ball bearings by four brackets bolted to the cylinder tops, the cams working in an oil bath. The eccentric shaft was in one piece actuated from a hand lever at the front end of the engine, thus putting all six cylinders on fuel at once during the starting operation. A centrifugal governor was mounted on the inclined shaft and the fuel lever, placed near by, controlled the fuel pumps, six in number, grouped together at the rear of the crankcase and driven by bevel gearing from the inclined shaft. The crankcase was of very light scantlings and of cast iron with large aluminium inspection doors, which were easily detachable. The weight of the engine'was 4,275 kg. (9,440 lbs.) or 19,4 kg per b.h.p. The duty of the governor was to prevent excessive racing' of the engine when the clutch was released or when the dynamo was running' at no load. During tests of instantaneous throwing off the load from full to no load, the engine speed increased momentarily to 565 r.p.m. and then settled down to 545 r.p.m., which was the speed for no load running of the engine. In table II. are given the principal results of the official 12 hoiirs non-stop trials of that engine made in 1912.

Owing to the shallow and undulating coast line of Russia

in the Baltic Sea, it was necessary to have small size submarines,

which could navigate those waters, and that explains

the reason why the submarines of the Ssom and Makrel class

were retained during the war when most other nations built

only quite large sea-going submarines. The Russian Navy

had a good number of large submarines also, fitted mostly with, two-stroke engines, but even the small submarines were

often operating near the coast of Germany, as could be instanced

by the case of submarine Oltun (Makrel class) which

sank a German battleship off Danzig in 1916. The abovedescribed

Diesel engines were not the smallest type submarine

engines built by Nobels. In 1914-three 50 b.h.p. four-cylinder

non-reversible Diesel engines were made, running at 500 r.p.m.

These engines were fitted in three 35-ton submarines, giving

them a speed of 6j knots. These submarines were designed

for the defence of the approaches to Cronstadt, and, if necessary,

could be taken on board ship for transportation. The crew of

these submarines consisted of five men all told, and the headroom

available was so small that a tall man had to move inside

the boat in a bent position. The cylinder dimensions of

these small engines were : diameter 170 m/m. (6 11/16tli ins.)

and stroke 220 m/m. (8 11 / 16th ins.) In general design they

were a copy of the 120 b.h.p. type on a smaller scale. The

weight of these engines was 910 kg. (2,000 lbs.) or 18-2 kg.

(40-2 lbs.) per b.h.p. A slightly modified type of such engines

using six cylinders in three blocks of two, the cylinder diameter

being 180 m/m. (7 l/16th ins.) and stroke 230 m/m.

(9 1 16th ins.) and developing 80 b.h.p. at 450 r.p.m., was

fitted into several minelayers during the war (Fig. 27). Reverse gears were provided for astern motion. A very important

point in connection with the design of these small and

medium size high speed Diesel engines was that of crankcase

ventilation. During the working of the engine, inside the

crankcase an oil vapour accumulates, and if it is not expelled

from the crankcase, an explosion may occur due to the ignition

of that oil vapour when coming in contact with the underside

of the hot uncooled piston head. To overcome this defect,

part of the necessary suction air for the cylinders is drawn

through the crankcase, thus sucking that vapour into the

cylinders, and incidentally cooling the pistons by air. But

this again has its disadvantages, because inside the crankcase,

especially in forced feed lubricated engines, oil splashes all

over the place and particles of such oil are drawn into the air

suction pipe. The engine in such a case runs partially on

fuel oil and partially 011 lubricating oil, with the result that

the fuel oil consumption is considerably reduced, while the

lubricating oil consumption is correspondingly increased. Besides

the financial drawback, such running entails considerable

risks, as, when there would be too much lubricating oil sucked

into the cylinder, the engine might get out of control and race

away, with consequent disastrous results. A system of carefully

designed baffle plates should be fitted into the suction

pipe, so as to arrest the particles of oil 011 their way up that

pipe.

A purely Diesel electric drive for warship propulsion was

also made by Nobels in the case of the small converted cruiser

liynda. The reason for the adoption of the purely electric

drive was that at the time the order was placed (1910) the

Admiralty had many doubts as to the advisability of having

reversible engines of 1,000 b.h.p. per shaft, considering that

for a six-cylinder engine the cylinder dimensions would be

prohibitive. This was contrary to Nobels ideas, who urged

the Admiralty to adopt one reversible engine of 1,000 b.h.p.,

as the ship was single screw. This, however, would have

meant too many alterations in the engine room, which was

very short, as a compound steam engine was there previously,

and the boiler space could not be allotted for the Diesel installation,

as it was to be used for other purposes. Eventually it

was decided to put two high speed Diesel engines of 600 b.h.p.

each direct coupled to 400 kw. D.C. generators, these generators supplying current to one slow speed electro-motor on the propeller shaft. In cylinder dimensions, D=450 m/m. and and S = 510 m/m. and general appearance the

engines were similar to those of motor ship Robert Nobel, hut

in order to get the necessary power output their piston speed

was increased to 5-45 m./sec. (1,070 ft./min.) or 320 r.p.m.

and the engines were of course not reversible. Owing to the

adoption of the electric drive the weight of the engine had to

be kept as low as possible, so as to come within reasonable

total weight figures, and the main cast parts of the engines were

steel castings with the exception of cylinder liners and

pistons, which were of cast iron (Fig. 28). No flywheels were fitted, as the armature of the dynamo, weighing 4,850 kg. (4|

tons) served as such. The weight of each engine proper was

23,750 kg. (23} tons) or 39-G kg. (87-5 lbs.) per b.h.p. Owing

to the high power output per cylinder (150 b.h.p.) piston cooling

had to be resorted to, and this was effected by circulating

the forced feed oil in the piston heads via hollow connecting

rods, the returning oil having been cooled in special separate

coolers provided for the purpose below the engine room floor.

The exhaust valves were water-cooled, as well as the exhaust

pipe and main bearings. Two plunger circulating water

pumps were driven from the forward end of the crankshaft, from which also was driven a two-stage tandem air compressor.

The dimensions of that compressor were D-HP 9U m/m.

(3 9/16th ins.) D-LP = 290 m/m. (11 7/ 16th ins.) and stroke

280 m/m. (llins.) and the air cooler was separate and bolted

to the side of the crankcase. Considerable trouble due to overheating

of air was experienced with that type of compressor,

so that it was replaced by a three-stage double tandem air compressor

of the following dimensions: D-HP 55 m/m. (2 3/16tli

ins.); D-IP 125 m/m. (4 15/ 16th ins.); D-LP 290 m/m.

(11 T/ 16th ins.) and a common stroke of 280 m/m. (llins.).

After that alteration the compressor troubles disappeared. It

was the first time, in Russia at least, that a double tandem

three-stage air compressor was applied to Diesel engines, but

since then all Nobel Diesel marine engines, having compressors

driven direct from the crankshaft, are fitted with such

double tandem three-stage compressors. In table III. are

given results of non-stop 100 hours duration official trials of

these Rynda type engines.

In 1912-1913 great extensions were made in the Naval Port

of Sebastopol, on the Black Sea, including the building of a

large dry dock to accommodate the new Russian battleships,

then under construction. A pumping station of considerable

power was built at the Dockyard. To prevent any damage to

machinery by enemv fire, the plant was placed underground

in casemates, protected by ferro-concrete and armour plates.

Owing to this the space was limited, of course, and the power

station of the plant was designed to have high speed Diesel

engines, driving the various pumps by electricity. The

Russian Admiralty expected war in the Black Sea, and therefore

was anxious to have the pumping station in working order

as soon as possible. As no firm could give quick enough delivery

of a high speed Diesel electric plant of about 750 kw.

aggregate output, the Admiralty sacrificed for the purpose

the Rynda engines, which were put into that power station in

1914, with all their electric gear, without any alteration.

The cruiser Rynda was broken up just before the war.

When the foiir Russian battleships of the Gangout class were

designed it was decided to provide some Diesel generating sets,

which could run in parallel with the steam turbine driven sets

and supply current to various parts of the ship, including the

electromotors for turning the gun turrets. The steam auxiliary

plant consisted of four 320 KW. DC. dynamos fitted with A.C. stop rings and driven by De Laval steam turbines. The

Diesel plant was of two sizes : the lighting plant and the power

plant. The lighting plant consisted of three sets of 180 b.h.p.

six-cylinder, four-stroke Diesel engines built by Felser Works

of Riga. These engines were direct coupled to 120 I(W. DC.

generators. The power plant consisted of two 320 KW. DC.

generators, with A.C. slip rings, direct driven through a

Voigt elastic coupling by a 480 b.h.p. Nobel Diesel engine

(Fig. 29). The reason for the adoption of Voigt coupling was that the engine and dynamo bedplates were separate castings,

not bolted together. These engines were placed in one engine

room just in front of the rear gun turret and under the main

protected deck. The cylinder dimensions were: diameter

375 m/m. (14fins.) and stroke 430 m/m. (16 15/16th ins.) and

the normal output of 480 b.h.p. was obtained in six cylinders

at 320 r.p.m. The fuel consumption of the engines at full

load w'as 195 grams (0-43 lbs.) per b.h.p. hour. The engines

were non-reversible and in general outline followed the usual

Nobel Diesel high speed medium power practice. A double

tandem air compressor of equal dimensions to that of Rynda

engines, but of slightly shorter stroke (270 m/m.—lOfins.) was

direct driven from the forward end of the crankshaft. The

pistons were water-cooled bv means of a telescoping gear and

the exhaust valves and exhaust pipes, silencers, and bearings 'were also water-cooled. The telescoping- gear consisted of a

tubular bridge piece bolted to the piston skirt by the middle

and having at the ends two vertical steel pipes well polished

externally.

These steel pipes moved up and down in gunmetal water

receivers, the leakage of water was prevented by a gland.

During navigation in the Baltic Sea, ordinary seawater was

used for piston cooling, as the salt contents in the water was

small, but during ocean voyages, the pistons were to be freshwater

cooled, while the cylinder jackets, etc., had seawater

cooling. The above-mentioned telescopic gear proved to be

troublesome in services, as the tightness of the gland depended

upon the perfectly vertical motion of the piston, i.e., without

any side play whatever. In practice this was impossible of

achievement as the piston had to have some small play inside

the cylinder, and that small play was large enough to loosen

the glands, so that water used to spout past these glands into

the bedplate. This was very undesirable, as the water was

mixing with the circulating oil at the bottom of the bed plate

and the emulsion was taken by the oil transfer pump to the day circulating oil tank and hence sent through the oil circulating system, with results which can easily be guessed. The author remembers such a case, while he was in charge of these

auxiliary sets on board the battleship Sebastopol in 1S14 in

the Baltic. The engines were supplying current for the turning

of 12in. gun turrets, and after some time it was observed

that emulsion got into the drip feeds. The situation was

rather an unpleasant one, as the engines could not be stopped

on any account. To continue the running of the engines on

emulsion for some considerable time was also out of the question,

therefore the only possible solution at that moment was to

stop the circulating principle of lubrication and lubricate the

bearings with fresh oil all the time, using the oil transfer

pump to convey the emulsified oil from the bottom of the bedplate

to an empty reserve oil tank near by, to which a suitable

connection was improvised 011 the spot. After the emulsified

oil had settled in that tank it was filtered, transferred to the

day oil tank and used over again.

After this experience it was decided to change over from the

telescopic principle to the grasshopper type, which was later

fitted to ail the eight engines and proved to be practically

immune from trouble. After this reconstruction the ordinary

circulating lubrication of bearings was again resorted to.

The author had another interesting experience with these

engines on hoard of all the four ships, and that was the effect

of resonnance or vibrations of foundations due to minor unbalanced

forces in the engines. It was found that when the

two engines were running together at the same speed, vibrations

of certain amplitude were set up in their foundations,

and when the two amplitudes synchronised, the vibrations became

so pronounced that it was quite unpleasant to stand on

the engine room floor. The remedy for it was found in the

running of engines at different speeds (one at 323 r.p.m. and

the other at 318 r.p.m.), when these vibrations disappeared.

With the description of this type of engine closes the chapter

of the four-stroke Nobel Diesel engines, as no more new types

of four-stroke engines were built by Nobels after those, all the

new types being of the two-stroke cycle; to the description of

which engines the author will proceed at next meeting, as it

is considered more desirable to do so and invite discussion on

each.

The C h a ir m a n : The paper to-night is historical. Some of

those present will probably find points for discussion, particularly

those who are opposed to the! four-stroke type of engine.

I notice that in the last paragraph the author states that Messrs.

Nobel have given up the manufacture of the four-stroke engine

in favour of the two-stroke.

Mr. W. H amilton Martin : Mr. Steinheil’s paper lias given

us some interesting historical facts about the early achievements

of the Nobel firm on the Diesel engine. What the

author tells us does not readily invite discussion, but it certainly

leads one back to the days when the marine Diesel engine was

in its infancy. Many were the difficulties met and overcome,

and great was the prejudice encountered by Dr. Rudolf Diesel

and his assistants while devoting untiring energy and capital to

the perfecting of his engine for both land and marine use.

Thanks to the wide circle of friends which my father had, and

the way in which I was always taken by him to join in the discussions

on matters of future interest, I had the privilege of

meeting the late Dr. Diesel several times. My father was one

of the engineers who took out an early licence for building the

two-cycle marine Diesel engines at the Flushing Royal Dockyard,

Holland, of which lie was the Engineering Manager from

its foundation in 1875.

We had many very interesting conversations with Dr. Diesel before deciding to take up the building of his engines, now nearly 15 years ago, and I recollect how even then Dr. Diesel repeatedly referred to the fine results obtained by the Nobel firm in Russia.

If I may make a slight digression, I would like to mention

here that three 1,000 K.W. dynamos, driven by six-cylinder

Diesel engines, were some time after installed at the Flushing

Dockyard by my father instead of the old steam plant for driving

the entire yard. This was just prior to the war, and when

soon after we had the coal famine in Holland, our yard with

its plentiful oil supply, thanks to foresight, could carry on

where others had to slow down on close altogether. This power

house has proved a great success. I may add that my father

made several suggestions, which were gratefully accepted, for

converting tlie inherently somewhat stationary type of Diesel

engine into a more suitable marine job. He very soon substituted

solid drawn steel tubing and conical unions for copper

piping with brazed joints for the fuel injection line, which was

always giving out, not being able to stand the vibration. He

also did away with silencers altogether, and substituted a light

water-cooled valve which has since been adopted as standard

in a certain Continental Navy’s Submarine Service; he devised

a. simple fuel injection pump which allowed of close speed regulation

and assured equal fuel supply to all working cylinders,

and made various other practical improvements.

In consequence of our relations with Dr. Diesel I had the

privilege of working for some time at the M.A.N. Works at

Nurnberg, as assistant in their testing department for highspeed

marine Diesels, which were then mostly fitted in submarines

or gunboats in sizes from 200 to 1,200 B.H.P., of three,

four, or six cylinders, all two-cycle. These people were continually

carrying out costly experiments for Dr. Diesel on

cylinder and piston head formations, scavenge, exhaust, and

fuel valves, cast iron mixtures for cylinders, etc.

I went through many of their marine engine “ teething ”

troubles with them, and gradually saw most of these cured on

severe endurance tests. Later on I saw several of these engines

giving satisfactory service, also during war service.

The Nobel people had by then, however, already passedi

through most of their troubles, and had actually been successfully

running reversible units in Russian tugs and submarines.

Speaking of tugs, we arranged with the makers to have a

300 h.p. six-cylinder two-cycle engined tug boat, the .Xirrn-

berg, in use some time in the dockyard at Mushing. She had

110 magnetic clutch as the Nobel’s fitted in theirs, and consequently,

when picking up a string of barges on a river or tidal

basin with current, this job often proved a more profitable one

for the tow-rope suppliers than for the tug owners.

The cushioning effect of steam when taking up the tow-strain will take a lot of beating, but the idea of fitting a magnetic or friction clutch ought to solve the question of gradually picking up the load. Without a clutch one could best compare the flexibility at starting of oil and steam power with a horse which jerks, when starting a loaded cart, and a span of oxen which slowly but steadily lean, as it were, against their yoke when commencing to move.

This tug was eventually sold to the German Navy at Kiel for instruction purposes of their submarine engineers, for which it has no doubt proved eminently suitable.

While at Numberg I met an engineer officer of the Russian Navy who was taking delivery there of some 1,100 B.H.P. two-cycle Diesel engines made presumably for Russian gunboats. Through the outbreak of war, however, these went into German submarines. His wonderful experience in the running of Diesel engines in those early days I have always envied. The inevitable result was, however, that this officer proved a relentless inspector. I remember his examining all finished cylinders and piston heads minutely with a strong lens, for hair-cracks or small flaws, after which they had to be kept for 24 hours under hydraulic preassure twice the working preassure.

I understood these were the Russian Admiralty’s test standards. Batches of a dozen or so fully finished cylinders or piston heads were rejected by him at a time, many of which would probably have been good enough for an appreciable amount of running. I did not envy the builders having that inspector!

These requirements no doubt led to the fact that the M.A.N. people soon made the finest cylinder head castings, and many of their later licencees preferred to order these parts from them. Their foundrymen were at the time earning as much as 90 to 100 marks a week, then £5, which in those days was very high pay indeed for such work. If Messrs. Nobel have had to contend with similar rigorous inspections in Russia and still managed to get such success in those days, it speaks all the more for their pluck and determination to have achieved all the work which has just been shown to us so ably by Mr. Steinheil.

Before ending, the following observation may be of interest; I just happened to notice in the Motorship year book of this year that from 1904 to 1911, out of the existing twenty-one motorships of the world, nineteen were Nobel and Kolomna engined.

The other two were—one in 1910, the tugboat "Nurnberg", which I mentioned, fitted with M.A.N. engines, and the other the "Vulcanus", fitted with Werkspoor engines.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+[[File:First Nobel Diesel.png|alt=(1898) Fig 1. The first Nobel Diesel Engine|thumb|(1898) Fig 1. The first Nobel Diesel Engin(e]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 2.png|alt=Figure 2|thumb|(1903) Fig. 2. The first Marine Diesel Engine of the Motor Ship “ "Ssarmat".”]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 3.png|alt=Figure 3|thumb|Fig. 3. Engine Room of Motor Ship “''"Ssarmat"''”]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 4.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 4|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 4]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 5.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 5|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 5]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 6.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 6|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 6]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 7.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 7|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 7]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 8.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 8|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 8]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 9.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 9|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 9]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 10.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 10|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 10]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 11.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 11|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 11]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 12.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 12|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 12]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 13.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 13|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 13]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 14.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 14|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 14]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 15.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 15|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 15]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 16.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 16|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 16]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 17.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 17|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 17]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 18.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 18|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 18]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 19.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 19|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 19]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 20.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 20|thumb|Fig 20. 160 B.H.P. Nobel Diesel Engine of Submarine ''“Ssom”'']]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 21.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 21|thumb|Fig 21. 160 B.H.P. Nobel Diesel Engine of Submarine ''“Ssom”'']]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 22.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 22|thumb|Fig 22. Valve gear of 160 B.H.P Nobel Diesel Engine]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 23.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 23|thumb|Fig 23 120 B.H.P- Nobel Diesel Engine of Submarine “ Makrel.”]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 24.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 24|thumb|Fig 24. 120 B.H.P. Nobel Diesel Engine of Submarine “ Makrel.”]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 25.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 25|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 25]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 26.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 26|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 26]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 27.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 27|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 27]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 28.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 28|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 28]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 29.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 29|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 29]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 30.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 30|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 30]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 31.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 31|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 31]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 32.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 32|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 32]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 33.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 33|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 33]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 34.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 34|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 34]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 35.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 35|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 35]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 36.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 36|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 36]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 37.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 37|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 37]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 38.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 38|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 38]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 39.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 39|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 39]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 40.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 40|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 40]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 41.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 41|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 41]]
+[[File:Nobel Diesel Fig 42.png|alt=Nobel Diesel Fig 42|thumb|Nobel Diesel Fig 42]]
 == '''Nobel Diesel''' ==
-A key part of the Nobel system was diesel technology. In 1893, the German engineer [[Rudolf Diesel]] received a patent for the engine that would forever bear his name. He sold manufacturing licenses to companies in several countries, including [[Maskinfabrik Ludvig Nobel]]. The negotiations leading up to the deal were handled by Emanuel Nobel himself, “the cold Swede” as Rudolf Diesel called him.
+A key part of the Nobel system was diesel technology. In 1893, the German engineer [[Rudolf Diesel]] received a patent for the engine that would forever bear his name. He sold manufacturing licenses to companies in several countries, including [[Maskinfabrik Ludvig Nobel]]. The negotiations leading up to the deal were handled by Emanuel Nobel himself, “the cold Swede” as '''Rudolf Diesel''' called him.
-The diesel engine was powered by fuel from Branobel’s own refineries. The engines powered the company’s tankers and power stations. Diesel engines were an important product for Maskinfabriken, which during the 1890s was the world’s largest diesel engine manufacturer. Advanced applications were also developed, such as portable diesel-powered power plants for the Russian army and diesel engines for the navy’s submarines.
+The diesel engine was powered by fuel from '''Branobel'''’s own refineries. The engines powered the company’s tankers and power stations. Diesel engines were an important product for Maskinfabriken, which during the 1890s was the world’s largest diesel engine manufacturer. Advanced applications were also developed, such as portable diesel-powered power plants for the Russian army and diesel engines for the navy’s submarines.
-After the revolution of 1917, the production of diesel engines ended up in Sweden. It was the only part of Nobel’s system that could be saved from the confiscation of all private property in Russia. In 1919, some of the brothers formed AB Nobel-Diesel in Nynäshamn. It was something of an attempt to re-establish what had only three years earlier been the engine department of Maskinfabriken Ludvig Nobel in St. Petersburg. One of the reasons for starting the company was to make use of the expertise of the many Swedes who had worked there but had been forced to flee the revolution.
+After the revolution of 1917, the production of diesel engines ended up in Sweden. It was the only part of Nobel’s system that could be saved from the confiscation of all private property in Russia. In 1919, some of the brothers formed AB '''Nobel-Diesel''' in Nynäshamn. It was something of an attempt to re-establish what had only three years earlier been the engine department of '''Maskinfabriken Ludvig Nobel''' in St. Petersburg. One of the reasons for starting the company was to make use of the expertise of the many Swedes who had worked there but had been forced to flee the revolution.
-One of the foremost diesel engine designers of the time was [[Anton Carlsund]]. He had been employed by the Nobel works in St. Petersburg and was personally acquainted with Emanuel Nobel. Carlsund lived in Sweden in 1919 and was employed as director of Nobel-Diesel. He is the one standing next to the first finished engine in Nobel-Diesel's workshop, a 1,600-horsepower reversible two-stroke diesel. The engine was one of the world's largest diesel engines in 1921, but it is still only a fragment of Nobel's enormous system.
+One of the foremost diesel engine designers of the time was [[Anton Carlsund]]. He had been employed by the Nobel works in St. Petersburg and was personally acquainted with '''Emanuel Nobel'''. '''Carlsund''' lived in Sweden in 1919 and was employed as director of Nobel-Diesel. He is the one standing next to the first finished engine in Nobel-Diesel's workshop, a 1,600-horsepower reversible two-stroke diesel. The engine was one of the world's largest diesel engines in 1921, but it is still only a fragment of Nobel's enormous system.
 The company [[AB Nobel-Diesel]] could not survive on its own, and was liquidated in 1926.
-== The Evolution of The Nobel Diesel Engine By BARON GEORGE J. STEINHEIL, B.Se., M.I.N.A., M.I.Mech.E, M.I.A.E. (Member). ==
+== The Evolution of The Nobel Diesel Engine ==
+By Baron '''George J. Steinheil''', B.Sc., M.I.N.A., M.I.Mech.E, M.I.A.E. (Member).
+READ ''Tuesday, November'' 14, ''at'' 6.30 ''p.m.''
+Chairman: Mr. '''P.B. Fielden''' (Vice-Chairman of Council).
 ''From a publication from 1922 from Institute of Marine Engineers.''
-In July, 1897, Dr. Rudolf Diesel, of Munich produced in conjunction with the [[MAN|Maschinenfabrik Augsburg]] the first engine bearing his name. The experimental work to produce a commercially possible engine from the original design took about eight years to accomplish, but by July, 1897, according to Dr. Diesel’s statement, the experimental stage was finished and drawings of the engine were sent to the drawing office of the Augsburg works, in order to start manufacture on a commercial scale. There was a considerable amount of controversy in this country as well as in Germany, whether the Diesel engine was actually Dr. Diesel’s invention or not, and whether it should be called by any rival name or simply a “ high compression oil engine.” It is not the subject of this paper to discuss the vexed question, as to do this, references would have to be made to patents, to transactions of various technical societies in this country and on the Continent, etc.
+In July, 1897, Dr. Rudolf Diesel, of Munich produced in conjunction with the [[MAN|Maschinenfabrik Augsburg]] the first engine bearing his name.
-However, it is enough to say that the engine developed by Dr. Diesel bears in everyday engineering life his name, and therefore the author proposes to call it by such in the paper. As soon as the first commercially practical engine was ready, representatives of various engineering concerns came to Germany to witness the tests of that engine with a view of obtaining the manufacturing licences for that type of engine for their respective works. Among those who saw the tests of this first engine was Mr. Anton Carlsund, at the time chief engineer of L. Nobel, Ltd., of Petrograd. He immediately appreciated the great possibilities of the new prime mover, especially from the Russian point of view, as in Russia the natural oil supplies were very great and incidentally practically the whole of these were controlled by Nobel interests. On his return to Russia he persuaded Mr. Emanuel Nobel, the head of the Nobel concern to acquire a licence for Diesel engines for Russia. In autumn 1897 all licence arrangements were completed and Nobels proceeded at once to build their first Diesel engine. All this happened 25 years ago.
+The experimental work to produce a commercially possible engine from the original design took about eight years to accomplish, but by July, 1897, according to Dr. Diesel’s statement, the experimental stage was finished and drawings of the engine were sent to the drawing office of the Augsburg works, in order to start manufacture on a commercial scale.
-[[File:First Nobel Diesel.png|alt=(1898) Fig 1. The first Nobel Diesel Engine|thumb|(1898) Fig 1. The first Nobel Diesel Engine]]
+There was a considerable amount of controversy in this country as well as in Germany, whether the Diesel engine was actually Dr. Diesel’s invention or not, and whether it should be called by any rival name or simply a “ high compression oil engine.”
-Thus the Nohel Works were among the very first firms in the world to take up Diesel engine manufacture, and among other pioneer firms may be mentioned such well-known concerns as Mirrlees, Watson, Co., Ltd., of Glasgow, now better known as Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day, Ltd., of Stockport; Maschinenfabrik Augsburg A.G.; Fr. Krupp, Germania Werft, Kiel; Care la f'reres, Ghent; Sulzer Bros., Winterthur, and others. It must, however, be admitted that the German Diesel engine of 1897 was found to be in many details quite unsuitable for Russian conditions, and the Nobels had the heavy task of re-designing the engine to suit these local conditions. Of the most important alterations were those of the fuel pump and pulveriser. The German engine was designed to work on paraffin, but the abundance of cheap raw naphtha (crude oil) in Russia, made it necessary to make the Russian engine to work on that fuel, and therefore the fuel pump and pulveriser had to be altered accordingly. In general outline, however, the Nobel engine followed closely the German design which was of the single cylinder stationary crosshead four-stroke cycle type, developing 20 b.h.p. at 200 r.p.m.. The cylinder dimensions of the engine were:-—
-Diameter 260 m/m. (10-¼ in.) and stroke 410 m/m. (16-⅛ in.). Fig. 1). Tests carried out on this engine by Professor G. Doepp, of Petrograd Institute of Technology, in 1899, showed that the engine easily developed as much as 25 b.h.p. at a fuel consumption (crude oil) of 220 grams (0-486 lbs.) per b.h.p. hour with a colourless exhaust*. In 1900 a new type of 30 b.h.p. per cylinder crosshead engine was put on the market, built in one and two cylinders per shaft. The first customers for Nobel engines were the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Co., and the Russian War Office, while the general public and even the majority of engineers of the time looked upon the new engine with considerable suspicion. Several engines were put in the Nobel Oil Refinery at Baku in 1900. The management of the Caucasian Railways, who were then busy building the great pipe-line from Baku, on the Caspian Sea to Batum on the Black Sea, a distance of about 500 miles, for the conveyance of paraffin (kerosene), decided to install Diesel engines in their pumping stations on the pipe-line. Their decision was influenced by the great economy of a Diesel plant and also by the lack of suitable feed water for boilers of steam engines in the Baku district. The first pumping station at Baku was to be of three pumping sets of 100 b.h.p. each. If steam engines were to be installed the fuel oil consumption per station per annum (4,000 working hours) would have been about G50 tons, assuming IT lbs. of oil per h.p. hour, whereas a Diesel plant of the same power would consume about half of that amount.
+It is not the subject of this paper to discuss the vexed question, as to do this, references would have to be made to patents, to transactions of various technical societies in this country and on the Continent, etc.
-Owing to the lack of fresh water supplies in Baku, the question of cooling of Diesel engine cylinders presented certain difficulties, but eventually it was decided to use the cooling water in a closed circuit, the outlet water entering a special watercooler, from which it was pumped again into the water jackets of Diesel engines. The cooling medium for the circulating water was the paraffin, which was pumped by the engines through the pipe line, the cooler having been connected for the purpose with the main pipe. In the semi-tropical climate of Caucasia this arrangement was considered more efficient than ordinary cooling towers. A new type of Diesel engine was designed for the purpose of developing 100 b.h.p. in two cylinders. The crosshead was abolished and ordinary trunk pistons were used. Three such sets were installed at Baku pumping station in 1902, and gradually all the other pumping stations on the pipe line were lniilt and fitted with Diesel engines. Bv 1903 ten different sizes of Diesel engines were already marketed bv Nobels in powers ranging from 10 to 100 b.h.p. per cylinder.
+However, it is enough to say that the engine developed by Dr. Diesel bears in everyday engineering life his name, and therefore the author proposes to call it by such in the paper. As soon as the first commercially practical engine was ready, representatives of various engineering concerns came to Germany to witness the tests of that engine with a view of obtaining the manufacturing licences for that type of engine for their respective works.
-The 10 b.h.p. single cylinder stationary engine was specially brought out to meet the demands of farmers and small power users. Another interesting instalation of three sets of single cvlinder trunk piston engines of 75 b.h.p. each was made in 1902 at the Tenteleff Chemical Works, of Petrograd. These engines were driving air compressors supplying air for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, and the nature of the work demanded continuous working of several davs’ running. To prevent excessive corrosion all exposed bright parts of the engines were coated with paint. It is quite possible that in future, rustless steel will be used by Diesel engine makers for this kind of work. In those early davs it was rather difficult to get Diesel engines ''t- I'' t o cv built on a manufacturing basis, as practically even* engine made was an improvement on the previous one. On the original 20 b.h.p. Diesel engine the injection air was sucked from the atmosphere and compressed to full blast pressure of 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per sq. inch) in a single stage air compressor direct driven by a rocking lever from the engine.
+Among those who saw the tests of this first engine was Mr. '''Anton Carlsund''', at the time chief engineer of '''L. Nobel''', Ltd., of Petrograd.
+He immediately appreciated the great possibilities of the new prime mover, especially from the Russian point of view, as in Russia the natural oil supplies were very great and incidentally practically the whole of these were controlled by Nobel interests. On his return to Russia he persuaded Mr. '''Emanuel Nobel''', the head of the Nobel concern to acquire a licence for Diesel engines for Russia.
+In autumn 1897 all licence arrangements were completed and Nobels proceeded at once to build their first Diesel engine.
+All this happened 25 years ago.
+Thus the Nobel Works were among the very first firms in the world to take up Diesel engine manufacture, and among other pioneer firms may be mentioned such well-known concerns as '''Mirrlees, Watson, Co'''., Ltd., of Glasgow, now better known as '''Mirrlees, Bickerton and Day''', Ltd., of Stockport; '''Maschinenfabrik Augsburg A.G'''.; '''Fr. Krupp''', '''Germania Werft''', Kiel; '''Carels fréres''', Ghent; '''Sulzer Bros'''., Winterthur, and others. It must, however, be admitted that the German Diesel engine of 1897 was found to be in many details quite unsuitable for Russian conditions, and the Nobels had the heavy task of re-designing the engine to suit these local conditions. Of the most important alterations were those of the fuel pump and pulveriser. The German engine was designed to work on paraffin, but the abundance of cheap raw naphtha (crude oil) in Russia, made it necessary to make the Russian engine to work on that fuel, and therefore the fuel pump and pulveriser had to be altered accordingly.
+In general outline, however, the Nobel engine followed closely the German design which was of the single cylinder stationary crosshead four-stroke cycle type, developing 20 b.h.p. at 200 r.p.m.. The cylinder dimensions of the engine were:-— Diameter 260 m/m. (10-¼ in.) and stroke 410 m/m. (16-⅛ in.). Fig. 1).
+Tests carried out on this engine by Professor '''G. Doepp''', of Petrograd Institute of Technology, in 1899, showed that the engine easily developed as much as 25 b.h.p. at a fuel consumption (crude oil) of 220 grams (0-486 lbs.) per b.h.p. hour with a colourless exhaust *. In 1900 a new type of 30 b.h.p. per cylinder crosshead engine was put on the market, built in one and two cylinders per shaft.
+The first customers for Nobel engines were the '''Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Co'''., and the Russian War Office, while the general public and even the majority of engineers of the time looked upon the new engine with considerable suspicion. Several engines were put in the '''Nobel Oil Refinery''' at Baku in 1900.
+The management of the Caucasian Railways, who were then busy building the great pipe-line from Baku, on the Caspian Sea to Batum on the Black Sea, a distance of about 500 miles, for the conveyance of paraffin (kerosene), decided to install Diesel engines in their pumping stations on the pipe-line. Their decision was influenced by the great economy of a Diesel plant and also by the lack of suitable feed water for boilers of steam engines in the Baku district. The first pumping station at Baku was to be of three pumping sets of 100 b.h.p. each. If steam engines were to be installed the fuel oil consumption per station per annum (4,000 working hours) would have been about 650 tons, assuming IT lbs. of oil per h.p. hour, whereas a Diesel plant of the same power would consume about half of that amount.
+Owing to the lack of fresh water supplies in Baku, the question of cooling of Diesel engine cylinders presented certain difficulties, but eventually it was decided to use the cooling water in a closed circuit, the outlet water entering a special watercooler, from which it was pumped again into the water jackets of Diesel engines. The cooling medium for the circulating water was the paraffin, which was pumped by the engines through the pipe line, the cooler having been connected for the purpose with the main pipe. In the semi-tropical climate of Caucasia this arrangement was considered more efficient than ordinary cooling towers. A new type of Diesel engine was designed for the purpose of developing 100 b.h.p. in two cylinders. The crosshead was abolished and ordinary trunk pistons were used. Three such sets were installed at Baku pumping station in 1902, and gradually all the other pumping stations on the pipe line were lniilt and fitted with Diesel engines. By 1903 ten different sizes of Diesel engines were already marketed by Nobels in powers ranging from 10 to 100 b.h.p. per cylinder.
+The 10 b.h.p. single cylinder stationary engine was specially brought out to meet the demands of farmers and small power users. Another interesting instalation of three sets of single cvlinder trunk piston engines of 75 b.h.p. each was made in 1902 at the '''Tenteleff Chemical Works''', of Petrograd. These engines were driving air compressors supplying air for the manufacture of sulphuric acid, and the nature of the work demanded continuous working of several davs’ running. To prevent excessive corrosion all exposed bright parts of the engines were coated with paint. It is quite possible that in future, rustless steel will be used by Diesel engine makers for this kind of work. In those early davs it was rather difficult to get Diesel engines ''t- I'' t o cv built on a manufacturing basis, as practically even* engine made was an improvement on the previous one. On the original 20 b.h.p. Diesel engine the injection air was sucked from the atmosphere and compressed to full blast pressure of 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per sq. inch) in a single stage air compressor direct driven by a rocking lever from the engine.
 This design gave fairly satisfactory results so long as the power output did not exceed 30-40 b.h.p. per cylinder, but when higher-powered engines were produced, considerable difficulties were experienced with this type of compressor. The volume of air to be compressed was so large, that the coolers could not cool the air well enough and not infrequently explosions occurred in the cooler coils and air supply pipes, due to ignition of oil present in the air. To overcome this defect it was suggested bv Dr. Diesel to make the compression of blast air in two stages, by by-passing the cylinder air during the compression period from the cylinder to the air compressor proper, where it was to be compressed to the blast pressure. The air from the cylinder was by-passed at a pressure of about 10 atm. (142 lbs. per square in.) into the air compressor by way of an intermediate cooler.
-Thus the air compressor had to compress comparatively cool air from 10 atm. to 50 atm., instead of from 1 to 50 atm. This arrangement, though it partially did away with the danger of explosion, introduced drawbacks of its own, in the shape o'f particles of dirt and carbon deposit, which were carried by the by-passing air into the compressor cylinder, often causing seizure of compressor pistons. Dr. Diesel, Professor Mayer, and the German makers, were greatly in favour of the by-pass arrangement, considering it a great improvement over the single stage compression in spite of its drawbacks, which they said were purely accidental. The Nobel engineers were, however, of a different opinion, which was based on the difficulties experienced with both systems of air compression. With the trunk piston type of engines they introduced the two-stage compound air compression proper, in which the air was compressed in two separate air compressors, driven by links from the engine. In the case of multi-cylinder engines, the L.P. and H.P. air compressors were separate units, but in single cylinder engines the air compressors formed one unit' and the two connecting rods were driven by a common link. The atmospheric air entered the L.P. stage compressor and was then compressed to T atm. (100 lbs. per square in.) then, after passing through a cooler, it entered the H.P. stage cylinder and was compressed from 7 atm. to 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per square in.). Eventually on large stationary engines a three-stage compression was introduced, the compressors being all separate units, driven by links. The German Augsburg Works, soon after Nobels, also dropped the by-pass' compression and introduced two-stage, air compressors of the tandem type. As already mentioned, considerable prejudice existed among prospective customers- against Diesel engines. They were afraid of the high pressures used, and of occasional breakdowns and accidents, which were in most cases due to the inexperience of attendants. However, after some time, confidence was established, and the demand for Diesel engines in Russia became so great that the Nobel Works could not cope with the orders. Arrangements were accordingly made in the autumn of 1903 for the Kolomna Works in Golutwin to take up the manufacture of four-stroke Diesel engines under licence from Nobels, the Kolomna Works, securing, to begin with, a part of the contract for pumping sets on the Baku-Batum pipe-line.
+Thus the air compressor had to compress comparatively cool air from 10 atm. to 50 atm., instead of from 1 to 50 atm. This arrangement, though it partially did away with the danger of explosion, introduced drawbacks of its own, in the shape o'f particles of dirt and carbon deposit, which were carried by the by-passing air into the compressor cylinder, often causing seizure of compressor pistons. Dr. Diesel, Professor '''Mayer''', and the German makers, were greatly in favour of the by-pass arrangement, considering it a great improvement over the single stage compression in spite of its drawbacks, which they said were purely accidental. The Nobel engineers were, however, of a different opinion, which was based on the difficulties experienced with both systems of air compression. With the trunk piston type of engines they introduced the two-stage compound air compression proper, in which the air was compressed in two separate air compressors, driven by links from the engine. In the case of multi-cylinder engines, the L.P. and H.P. air compressors were separate units, but in single cylinder engines the air compressors formed one unit' and the two connecting rods were driven by a common link.
+The atmospheric air entered the L.P. stage compressor and was then compressed to T atm. (100 lbs. per square in.) then, after passing through a cooler, it entered the H.P. stage cylinder and was compressed from 7 atm. to 50-60 atm. (700-850 lbs. per square in.). Eventually on large stationary engines a three-stage compression was introduced, the compressors being all separate units, driven by links. The German Augsburg Works, soon after Nobels, also dropped the by-pass' compression and introduced two-stage, air compressors of the tandem type. As already mentioned, considerable prejudice existed among prospective customers- against Diesel engines. They were afraid of the high pressures used, and of occasional breakdowns and accidents, which were in most cases due to the inexperience of attendants. However, after some time, confidence was established, and the demand for Diesel engines in Russia became so great that the Nobel Works could not cope with the orders. Arrangements were accordingly made in the autumn of 1903 for the Kolomna Works in Golutwin to take up the manufacture of four-stroke Diesel engines under licence from Nobels, the Kolomna Works, securing, to begin with, a part of the contract for pumping sets on the Baku-Batum pipe-line.
 The majority of orders for Diesel engines about that time were for engines suitable for belt drive of workshops, flour mills, textile mills, and small power stations for lighting purposes, etc. The electrical engineers were at the time of the opinion that a Diesel engine could not be made to run with enough cyclic regularity to be able to drive a dynamo direct coupled to the crankshaft, and especially a direct driven alternator running in parallel with engines of other types and speed (gas, steam, water turbines, etc). To prove the fallacy of that idea, the Nobel Works installed in the power station of the Petrograd Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1905 an 80 b.h.p. twin-cylinder Diesel engine direct coupled to a D.C. dynamo, which supplied current, in parallel with steam driven dynamos, for the lighting of the premises as well as driving of various electro-motors in the laboratories and buildings. In the same year later a 400 b.h.p. three-cylinder engine direct coupled to an alternator was installed in the power house of the Perm Ordnance Works in the Ural district, and this alternator was run in parallel with an alternator driven by a steam engine. After that successful experiment the demand for high power stationary engines became very great and most of the principal provincial towns in Russia, as well as various works and shipyards, put direct-driven Diesel generators into their power houses. The largest type of four-stroke stationary engine built by Nobels was that of 200 b.h.p. per cylinder at 150 r.p.m
@@ Line 34: / Line 105: @@
 The cylinder dimensions of that engine were: Diameter (100 m/m. and stroke 800 m/m. Three and four-cylinder sets of this size were built, developing 600 and 800 b.h.p. respectively. Two such 600 b.h.p. engines were installed in the steel rolling plant of Moscow Metal Works, Ltd., in 1907, one of these engines being direct coupled to the mills. Such work put very heavy stresses on the engine, as it had to work at a constantly variable load from practically 110 load to overload and ''vice versa.'' The fact that this engine has done this work already for fifteen years, only proves the reliability of the modern Diesel engine. Another interesting installation of an 800 b.h.p. engine was at the Tzaritzin Flour Mills. The engine was a four-cylinder set with a heavy flywheel pulley between the second and the third cylinders. The pulley was arranged for rope drive. The crankshaft was so designed that either pair of the cylinders could be uncoupled from the flywheel, the engine working then 011 two cylinders at lialf-power. The reason for such an arrangement was the doubt of the owners in the reliability of the Diesel engine, they preferring to have at least half the power than nothing at all in case of breakdown. It must be remembered that even a short stoppage of machinery in a flour mill entails considerable inconvenience and even loss to the millers, as most of the grain and flour in the middle of the process must he sent again from the start, and therefore the attitude of the Tzaritzin Mill owners was understandable, as to them at the time a Diesel engine installation was quite a novelty. However, it must be said to the credit of the builders of the engine that there never was an occasion to run the engine 011 two cylinders. Although the building of stationary Diesel engines formed a considerable branch of the Nobel Diesel business, it was for the designing and building of marine Diesel engines that Nobels spent most of their energies, and therefore the author will proceed to the description of a few interesting types of marine engines.
-'''Four-Stroke Nobel-Diesel Marine Engines.'''
+=== '''Four-Stroke Nobel-Diesel Marine Engines.''' ===
+Not counting a small 20 b.h.p. French Diesel engine fitted into a small canal barge in France, it is to Nobels that belongs the credit of having built in 1903 the first marine Diesel engine and in which the speed could be varied by hand. That engine was a four-cylinder one of “A” frame trunk piston type and developed 180 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were: Diameter 320 m/m.  and stroke 420 m/m. The outside view of the engine is shown in Fig. 2. Two such engines were fitted in 1904 into the motor-tank-ship "''Ssarmat''", of the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co.
+The "''"Ssarmat""'' was a ship of 800 tons D.W. capacity and therefore of very humble dimensions as compared with present-day tankers of 15,000 tons. Her hull dimensions were: length B-P 244ft. 6 in., breadth md. 31 ft. 9in., and draught fully loaded 6 ft. She was built at the Ssormovo Shipyard, on the River Volga, and was suitable for both river and sea navigation. The engines were non-reversible and the necessary astern motion of the propeller shaft was obtained on the Del-Proposto system. That system consisted of a dynamo direct coupled to the engine crankshaft and an electromotor coupled to the propeller shaft, between those two was interposed a friction clutch. For ordinary ahead running the clutch was coupled in and the propeller was direct driven by the engine. The dynamo and electromotor were not working, but rotating simply as additional flywheels and the speed of the ship was regulated by the speed of the engine.
+For astern running the clutch was released, current switched on and the electromotor turned the propeller shaft in a direction opposite to that of the engine (Fig. 3). The engine was run at constant speed, whereas the electromotor could be run at variable speed, thus regulating the speed of the ship. The ''"Ssarmat"'' has been in commission for nineteen years, having- still the original engines (Fig. 4). A sister ship to the ''"Ssarmat",'' named ''Vandal,'' was built at the Ssormovo yard a year before the former, and was also fitted with four-stroke Diesel engines, but of the ordinary stationary type, the propeller shaft drive being purely Diesel-electric. These engines had direct coupled dynamos, which supplied current to electromotors on the propeller shafts. Three of such three cylinder engines, built by the works now owned by the New Atlas-Diesel Co., of Stockholm, were fitted into the ''Vandal.''
+The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 290 mm and stroke 430 mm., each engine developing 120 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The "''Vandal''" and the ''"Ssarmat"'' were actually the two first motorships in the world, and, although comparatively little publicity was given as to their performance, it must be said that they played a very important part in the development of motor-shipbuilding in Russia.
+The fact that the two motorships in those days could maintain a regular service for single voyages of over 3,000 miles long, year in and year out, carrying petroleum in bulk, set many Russian shipowners thinking, and the performance of these two ships was closely watched.
+The behaviour of these two ships in service was so satisfactory that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company had decided then to convert the whole of their steam fleet into motor ships.
+Such a conversion was probably the biggest one ever yet undertaken, as the tonnage of the fleet was over 650,000 tons D.W., and some of the tankers were of 10,000 tons D.W. capacity.
+The programme was arranged for the gradual conversion of ships, starting with tugs and the smaller tankers first.
+As the conversion could not be accomplished by the Nobel Works alone, because they were very busy with naval orders, part of the conversion work was given over to the Kolomna Works in Golutwin, who were Nobels’ licensees.
+These two firms supplied the bulk of the engines for the fleet, but a few ships were fitted with engines purchased abroad.
+In many cases quite good triple expansion steam engines had been removed and replaced by Diesels.
+It was expected that by 1924 the conversion would have been completed, but unfortunately the outbreak of the war in 1914 and of the Russian revolution in 1917, completely upset the programme, as in 1918 the Bolsheviks had “nationalised ” the Nobel fleet, with the result that only a comparatively small number of old tankers are running at present.
+It is of interest to note however, that of the two first marine Diesel installations, that of the "''Ssarmat"'' with Del-Proposto drive, proved to be more reliable and economical than that of the "''Vandal",'' which had a Diesel electric drive.
+The ''"Vandal"'' was broken up in 1913.
+The replacement of steam machinery in paddle tugs by Diesels required a considerable amount of ingenuity, as the speed of the paddles was so much below the slowest normal speed of Diesel engines and it naturally required the adoption of some sort of reduction gear.
+It was out of the question, of course, to put slow speed land type engines, as they were much too heavy and cumbersome for the weak hulls of the river tugs. A special type of high-speed light multi-cylinder direct reversible engine had to be designed for the purpose.
+In 1907 such an engine was already on the test bed at the Nobel Works and it developed 120 b.h.p. in three cylinders at 400 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 275 m/m. and stroke 300 m/m. (Fig. 5).
+It was of the enclosed crankcase type with a two-stage air compressor at the side of the engine, driven by rocking levers. This engine was the first direct reversible four-stroke Diesel engine ever built in the world.
+Reversing was performed through the shifting of cams by means of forks fitted to a layshaft and actuated by the hand-wheel seen in Fig. 5 near the top of the vertical shaft.
+Each cylinder had two sets of cams, and to allow for their shifting, the rocking levers of the valves had to be pressed down by means of the long hand lever seen on the top of the engine, so as to lift the rollers clear of the cams. This type of reverse gear is known as Carlsund’s gear.
+The manoeuvring lever is seen near the middle of the vertical shaft, and it actuated the lower layshaft, which in its turn threw the starting and fuel valves in and out of gear when necessary.
+The manoeuvring lever could he rotated round a dial.
+The position of that lever shown in Fig. 5 is the “ Stop ” position, when the fuel and starting valves are out of gear. Two-stroke starting was provided, ''i.e.,'' admission of starting air was on every downward stroke, as otherwise with a three-cylinder four-stroke engine at certain crank positions no starting valve may he open.
+Turning the manoeuvring lever clockwise, there came the first “ Start” position, when the three cylinders were working on air, then came the second “ Start ” position, when the first cylinder was on fuel, and the other two on air, then the third “ Start ” position, when two cylinders were on fuel and the third on air and finally came the “Work” position when all the three cylinders were working on fuel.
+This type of starting gear was the invention of Mr. '''Nordstroem''', of Nobels (Nordstroem’s patent, Sweden, 1907). The fuel regulation could be performed in two ways, firstly by a small hand-wheel at the lower end of the vertical shaft, which could vary the tension of springs of the centrifugal governor and secondly by a small hand lever, which controlled the lift of the suction valves of the fuel pumps.
+The lubrication of the engine was of three kinds: forced for cylinders and air compressors, by means of a mechanical lubricator and gravity for main bearings, which were watercooled, whereas the crankpins had banjo ring lubrication.
+Two of such engines were installed in the Russian submarine ''"Minoga"'', in 1908, and it may be stated that the above submarine, though comparatively ancient as submarines go, did very good work during the great war. A number of these engines were built for naval purposes as well as merchant marine, and, in the 11011-reversible design as lighting sets in ships and as stand-by engines in power stations.
+In Table I. are given results of official 120 hour trials carried out by Professor '''N. Bykoff''', of Petrograd Institute of Technology upon ''“Minoga”'' engines in 1908. This type of engine, however, was too small and of too high a speed to work satisfactorily in the paddle tugs, and therefore a more powerful engine of similar design was brought out in 1908.
+The design of that new engine was later standardised, and it was produced in three, four and six cylinder models. Besides river paddle tugs, that engine was fitted in 1909 into the Russian submarine ''"Akula"'' (three four-cylinder sets of 300 b.h.p. each at 3T5 r.p.m.) That engine in general appearance was similar to the ''“Minoga”'' engines, with the exception that in some of the later engines tandem air compressors were direct driven from the forward end of the crankshaft.
+The reverse gear in that type of engine was simplified—the shifting of cams having been performed by a hand lever that actuated the layshaft, instead of by the handwheel as was on the ''“Minoga”'' engines.
+On the later engines of the ''“Minoga”'' type the reverse gear was also altered to hand lever cam shifting and a tandem air compressor was fitted at the forward end of the crankshaft.
+The paddle tugs had their engines placed transversely, ''i.e.,'' parallel to the paddle shafts. In the case of larger tugs two direct reversible engines were fitted, driving the shafts through electro-magnetic clutches. The Nobel Bros, motor tug ''"Ssamoyed",'' was a typical example of this class of river tugs. She was built in 1909 for service on the upper reaches of the River Volga and Northern Canal system for the towing of oil barges. The hull dimensions were: length B-P. 132ft. 9ins., breadth md. 19ft., depth md. 8ft. 3ins., draught 3ft. 3ins., D.W. capacity 10 tons, and Cargo towing capacity 3,200 tons. She had two three-cvlinder reversible four-stroke engines, developing each 140 b.h.p. at 260 r.p.m., whereas the paddles turned at 35 r.p.m.
+The paddle shafts were separate, each engine driving through an electric-magnetic clutch one paddle only, which considerably added to the manoeuvring qualities of the tug. The necessary speed reduction was obtained through herringbone gears of the Citroen type (Fig. 6).
+The cylinder dimensions of' these engines were : diameter 330 m m. (13ins.) and stroke 380 m/m. (15ins.). Motor tug "''Lesgin",'' built in 1910 for the same owners, had two four cylinder engines of the above type developing 200 b.h.p. each, as the size of the boat was larger (90 tons D.W., 4,800 tons tow  L. 175ft., B. 27ft., 1). 8ft. and draught 2ft. 4ins.).
+The drive from the engines to the paddle shafts was through Dohmen-Leblanc clutches and Citroen gears (Fig. 7).
+Motor tug ''"Ossetin"'' (Fig. 8) of slightly smaller dimensions than the "''Lesgin",'' was fitted also with two four-cylinder 200 b.h.p. engines, but these were placed longitudinally side by side, driving through Dohmen-Leblanc clutches two propeller shafts (Fig. 9).
+The speed of the engines was 270 r.p.m. These two larger sized tugs and their sister ships were used for towing purposes on the lower reaches of the Volga. The first motor tug on the Volga was the ''"Belomor",'' built in 1908. She was smaller than the above-mentioned tugs, her dimensions being: eight tons D.W. capacity, 1,600 tons tow, L. 110ft. 6in., B. 17ft., D. 8ft., draught 3ft. 3ins.
+Only one reversible three-cylinder engine of 140 b.h.p. was fitted, driving a paddle shaft common to both paddles through an electric-magnetic clutch and Citroen gears.
+This arrangement of solid paddle shaft had the drawback that both paddles could only be turned in one direction at a time and therefore for the turning of the ship only the rudder was available. In 1911-1912 three slightly larger single engine paddle tugs were built for the service on the Vistula in Poland.
+They were called the ''"Mazur", "Polia",'' and ''"Madjar"'' (Fig. 10). They were captured by the Germans during the war and used by them for army purposes, upon the signing of the Versailles peace treaty these tugs were returned to their rightful owners, and are now in service again.
+In Fig. 11 is shown the engine of motor tug ''"Mazur".''
+It is interesting to note, as a special proof of the economy of the motorship, that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company found it cheaper to carry their oil from Baku on the Caspian Sea to Warsaw on the Vistula, via Astrakhan, Volga, Northern Canal System, Neva, Petrograd, Finnish Gulf, and the Baltic Sea into Vistula, a total distance of 3,200 miles, instead of using railways, the distance in the latter case being only 1,900 miles.
+Considerable amount of trouble was experienced at the beginning with the above mentioned Citroen type of gear drive, the fault having been not with the gears themselves, but with the design of the arrangement of machinery in the ship.
+The hulls and engine foundations of river paddle tugs and boats in general, were made very light as the water surface was usually smooth and the inertia forces of slow speed (25-40 r.p.m.) horizontal paddle steam engines were quite negligible.
+With the adoption of Diesel propulsion the conditions become quite altered, as the comparatively high speed vertical Diesel engine with its heavy pistons and connecting rods was likely to set up considerable vibrations in the foundations and in the hull, especially if the inertia forces were not properly balanced and the period of engine vibrations synchronised with that of the hull.
+Such vibrations were likely to cause deformations in the hull structure, so that the gears could get out of alignment, sometimes with disastrous results.
+The author remembers having seen a breakdown of such gears in one of the earlier tugs, due to the abovementioned cause, when the teeth of the large wheel were stripped clean off.
+This difficulty was eventually overcome by a suitable design of the hull and strengthened engine foundations, combined with a better system of balancing of engines.
+It is not the intention of the author to go into the question of engine balancing and hull vibrations in this paper, as the subject is too important and voluminous, and it could easily form a paper by itself.
+During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 the water communications of the Russian armies in the Far East were very much hampered by bands of lawless Khunghuses, who attacked defenceless tugs and barges on the River Amour, causing considerable delays in the delivery of supplies and munitions.
+In order to bring these brigands to book the Russian Government commandeered several river steamers and converted them into some sort of river gunboats, by arming them with small naval guns and machins guns.
+These boats helped a lot to stop looting, and even policed the river after the conclusion of war in peace time. But as these boats had log-fired boilers and only a limited supply of wood could be taken on board at a time, it was decided in 190G to build eight new river monitors, armed with two 6in. Q.F. and four 4.7in. Q.F. guns, and driven by Diesel engines, which would give them the ability of making long runs without replenishing their fuel tanks.
+The total power of the engines per ship was estimated to be 1,000 b.h.p., which was to give the ship a speed of 11 knots. The order for all these engines was secured by Nobels, but as the Admiralty was in a hurry to get the ships ready as soon as possible, it was decided not to wait until the completion of the tests of the reversible engines, but fit in non-reversible engines with a Del-Proposto drive.
+Every monitor got four engines of 250 b.h.p. each in four cylinders running at 350 r.p.m., the engine being similar in other respects to the tug engines of Nobel Bros. Co. As the whole contract of 32 engines could not be finished by Nobels in time, a half of that number was given over to the Kolomna Works, who built those engines from Nobels’ drawings.
+The hulls of these eight monitors (known as “Shkwal” class) (Fig. 12) were built at the Baltic Shipyard in Petrograd, and were sent in pieces to an erecting yard on the River Amour, where they were assembled.
+The first monitor, ''"Shkwal",'' was ready in 1908, and after having undergone her trials in the Gulf of Finland, she was shipped in pieces to the Far East.
+Among the sea-going motor tankships can he mentioned Motorship ''"Robert Nobel",'' of Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co. (Fig. 13. She was originally a twin-screw tank steamer of 1,700 D.AV. capacity (L. 260t't., B. 34f't., ]). 17ft., draught 14ft.) In 1909 she was to undergo a complete overhaul of engines and boilers, but instead of that it was decided to convert her into a motorship.
+Two four-cylinder Nobel-Diesel engines of the enclosed crankcase type of 400 b.h.p. each were fitted in 1910, driving propeller shafts through Dohmen Leblanc clutches at 215 r.p.m. The engines had the following cylinder dimensions: diameter 450 mm and stroke 510 mm. and were direct reversible. The reverse gear, however, was different from Carlsund’s gear used on the smaller power engines, as it consisted of two set of rollers on the links of valve rocking levers.
+Only one cam was required for every valve for both ahead and astern running, and the cams were fixed solidly on the camshaft, ''i.e.,'' there was no shifting of cams for reversing, which was performed by placing the second roller against the cams through a suitable movement of the links. This type of reverse gear is known as Nordstroem’s gear (Nordstroem’s patent, Sweden, 1909).
+The reason for the change of design in the reverse gear was that at the time it was considered that the shifting of cams by hand could only be performed on engines of comparatively small powers, and that in larger sizes it would be beyond the power of an ordinary man to shift the cams and thus a servo motor would have to be introduced.
+The Nordstroem’s double roller reverse gear was so designed as to abolish the cam shifting and the whole of the reversing operation could be performed in 7-8 seconds. The idea about the impossibility of cam shifting by hand on large engines proved, however, to be false, and it will be shown later that all modern two-stroke Nobel-Diesel engines up to the very largest powers have hand camshifting, without the use of any servo motors whatever.
+This Nordstroem’s double roller reverse gear, though not used at present by Nobels, has been revived lately by a well-known Swiss concern on their two-stroke engines.
+In 1908 it became necessary to police the communications on the Caspian Sea and protect Russian shipping from assaults of Persian pirates, and therefore it was decided to build two sea-going gunboats of 680 tons displacement and 141/2 knots speed, armed with two 4,7 in. Q.F. guns and four 3 in. Q.F. guns.
+Owing to the fact that these gunboats might be called to leave port at a moment’s notice, and also to the presence of local cheap supplies of oil, they were designed with Diesel engines as their propelling machinery, because to keep steam always up would have been too costly.
+Tenders were invited from various Bussian (by that time two more firms got licences to build Diesel engines in Russia) and foreign firms for non-reversible engines with Del-Proposto drive.
+Among these tendering firms were the Nobel Works, who sent in a tender for direct reversible engines of 500 b.h.p. each. The comparative simplicity and compactness of Nobel design  with direct reversible engine installation as compared with a Del-Proposto plant, appealed considerably to the Russian Admiralty, with the result that new tenders were asked from various firms for direct reversible engines. A few of the firms sent in those new tenders for reversible engines, but without any guarantee.
+This made the Technical Department of the Admiralty decide again in favour of Del-Proposto drive, as their own experience with direct reversible engines was at the time only with engines of submarines ''"Minoga"'' and ''"Akula",'' which in the latter case did not exceed 300 b.h.p. per shaft, and they were afraid to take the risk of installing reversible engines of nearly double the power per shaft.
+After a lot of arguments the Nobel Works persuaded the Admiralty to adopt direct reversible engines, the Nobels installing them at their own risk, so that in case of failure they were to convert the engines to non-reversible type with Del-Proposto drive.
+This was a rather daring proposition, as it meant to the engine builders a loss of at least £2,000 per ship, in case such a conversion would have been necessary. The hulls of these two twin-screw gunboats ''"Kars"'' and ''"Ardagan"'' (Fig. 14) were built by the Petrograd Admiralty Dockyard.
+Every ship had two direct reversible six-cylinder engines, developing 500 b.h.p. per shaft and running at 310 r.p.m.
+The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 375 m/m. and stroke 430 m/m. In general design these engines were similar to those of the Motorship ''"Robert Nobel"'', and had the Nordstroem’s twin-roller reverse gear (Figs. 15 and 16).
+Two twin-cylinder auxiliary sets of 60 b.h.p. each were also provided. The cooling of the engines was with fresh water, which circulated in a closed circuit and was cooled before entering the cylinders in special coolers provided for the purpose. Such an arrangement was considered necessary, as at the time it was thought that the cooling of cylinders by seawater from the Caspian Sea, which contained a considerable percentage of salt, would be detrimental to the engines. In autumn 1909 the ''"Kars"'' was ready for trials, which took place in the Gulf of Finland. While turning under her own power in the River Neva the gunboat nearly dashed into the granite embankment of the river.
+The situation was critical. The captain of the ''"Kars"'' having raised the Russian Naval Ensign before the trials, automatically took all the responsibility from the builders for the safety of the ship.
+Common sense told him that to save the ship and his own job it was necessary to reverse the engines, but being a steam man, he had little experience with Diesel-driven ships, and naturally, mistrusting the new type of engine, was afraid to reverse them.
+Seeing- the captain’s indecision, Mr. '''M. P. Seiliger''', Manager of Nobels, who was standing on the bridge near the captain, took the matter in his own hands and pulled the engine room telegraph of both engines to “full speed astern.”
+Before the usual reply came from the engineroom the ship stopped and started moving away from the shore. The captain, who was rather angry at first with the impudence of an ordinary “civilian” giving orders on a warship, did not know afterwards how to thank Mr. '''Seiliger''' for the saving of the ship.
+In the early spring of 1910 the two gunboats ''"Kars"'' and ''"Ardagan"'' were to proceed to their stations on the Caspian Sea.
+Originally it was intended to dismantle their machinery and armament and tow the hulls along the Northern Canal system and Volga to Astrakhan, where the machinery and guns were to be put in again. But by that time the captains and the crew became great Diesel enthusiasts, and it was decided to send the boats via the same route direct to Baku under their own power.
+Having left Petrograd the gunboats encountered floating ice-fields in the Ladoga Lake, and had to work as ice-breakers in order to be able to proceed.
+While under tow, negotiating some rapids on the River Svir, the tow rope of ''the "Ardagan"'' broke, and, if it were not for the instantly started Diesel engines, the ship would have got on the rocks.
+During the journey on the Volga it was found that for continuous running at full speed the piston tops were likely to give trouble, as several cases of cracking were observed. This was quite a new experience, as up to that time the high speed engines were of a small enough diameter not to produce these troubles.
+Two solutions offered to that problem, either to introduce piston cooling or re-design the piston tops and make them of some more suitable material.
+The Nobel Works had chosen the latter course in the case of these engines, as the adoption of piston cooling meant too many alterations in the installation.
+On the way from Astrakhan to Baku the gunboats got into a severe gale, which taxed their propelling machinery to the utmost.
+In military operations
+■of 1919, in the Caspian Sea, these gunboats took an active
+part. Two sets of similar engines were fitted in 1911 into the
+Black Sea Revenue Cruiser ''Yastreb,'' whose hull was built at
+the Nicolaiett Shipyard (Fig. IT).
+One set of such engines was built for the Admiralty icebreaker train ferry ''Galerny,''
+for the conveyance of railway goods trucks across the River
+Neva.
+This latter ship had propellers at both ends, driven
+through friction clutches from each end of the engine, one
+propeller moving at a time. This arrangement was adopted
+in order to do away with the turning of the ship in the river (Fig. 18).
+Up to 1910 all tlie Russian submarines, with the
+exception of ''Minoga'' and -1 ''kulci'' had petrol or paraffin engines;
+but owing to several fatal accidents due to petrol explosions, the Russian Admiralty decided in 1909 to replace these light petrol-paraffin engines by Diesels, as risks of fire in the latter case would be less.
+This was no easy proposition, as the weight of marine Diesel engines of that time was in the neighbourhood of 40 kg per b.h.p., whereas the weight of petrol or paraffin engines was 20-25 kg per b.h.p.
+Tenders were invited from various Russian and foreign firms for light high speed Diesel engines, and the most suitable tender showed a weight per b.h.p. of 25-30 kg. (55-65 lbs.), but unfortunately the overall dimensions of all these tendered engines were far too large to enable the engines to be put into those submarines.
+Eventually, however, the Admiralty specially requested the Nobel Works to take the whole order for the conversion of fourteen submarines to Diesel power.
+Owing to the lack of available space in the engine room the Diesel engines had to be designed of about the same overall dimensions as the petrol engines, and, in order to reduce their weight, resort had to be made to high grade materials, such as chrome, nickel steels, aluminium, etc.
+All this meant considerable experimental work, before a suitable engine could be produced. With a view of coming nearer to the practical solution of that problem Nobels had built in 1909 a special experimental marine Diesel engine of extremely light weight. After exhaustive trials in the shops, that engine was fitted into Mr. L. Nobel’s motor yacht ''"Intermezzo",'' and tested under actual sea-going conditions. The engine was of the V type, the angle of V being 90°. There were eight cylinders of 200 m/m diameter and 220 m/m stroke, placed four on each side of the V.
+At the end of each row of cylinders were placed the air compressors, the L.P. cylinder on one side and the H.P. cylinder on the other. Both compressors had no suction valves, the suction being through small ports. The engine developed 200 b.h.p. at 600 r.p.m. (Fig. 19).
+The cylinders were of cast iron with copper water jackets. The crankcase was of aluminium and the connecting rods of alloy steel.
+The crankshaft, which was made at Fagersta in Sweden from Swedish carbon steel and tough hardened by Brinell process had a diameter of 100 mm. The tensile stress of material was 80-90 k.g. per sq. mm. with an elongation of about 12%.
+The ball bearing camshaft was on top of the crankcase between the cylinders, the reversing being performed by the shifting of the camshaft bodily endwise.
+The valve gear and the general appearance of that engine resembled very much those of the present-day aero engines.
+The lubrication was
+forced. The weight of that Diesel engine was only 2,000 kg.
+or 10 kg. (22 lbs.) per b.h.p., which made it the lightest Diesel
+engine ever produced.
+Very valuable experience was obtained
+with the running of that engine, and many points of
+its design were embodied in the new engines specially built
+for the conversion of submarines.
+These fourteen submarines
+were of three different types and sizes: ''Ssovv''
+class, six boats of Lake type of 110 tons displacement
+had petrol engines of 160 b.h.p.: J''lakrel'' class, seven boats
+of Holland type, and 115 tons displacement, with engines of
+b.h.p. and the ''Delphin'' class (one boat) was of Russian
+design with petrol engines of 200 b.h.p. Therefore, owing to
+the difference in size and shape of engine room, three entirely
+different types of engines had to be produced.
+The conversion
+began in 1910 with the Lake type boats first, and instead of the old petrol engine was installed in each boat one six-
+cylinder 160 b.h.p. non-reversible Nobel-Diesel engine, giving
+the boat a surface speed of 9^ knots. In general appearance
+these engines resembled also very much the present-day aero engines, as can be seen from Figs. 20 and 21.
+The cylinder dimensions were: diameter 225 m/m and stroke 300 mm, and the engine developed its full
+power of 160 b.h.p. at 440 r.p.m. The weight of the engine was
+only 2,900 kg. (6,400 lbs.), which worked out at 18-1 kg. (40 lbs.)
+per b.h.p. In order to get such light weight combined with necessary strength and stiffness, the usual orthodox design of Diesel engines had to be departed from, and the engine designed on entirely novel lines.
+Thus the bedplate consisted of two parallel longitudinal girders with four cast iron box shaped cross beams carrying the main bearings.
+A very light cast iron crankcase did not take any vertical stresses as special run through bolts held it down to the cross girders of the bedplate.
+The three cast-in-pairs blocks of cylinders were bolted
+down to the crankcase top by the usual studs. The size of the
+main bearings was kept as small as possible, and in order to
+allow for their efficient working their lower halves were water-
+oooled and had forced lubrication by an oil gear pump driven
+from the lower end of the vertical shaft at the front part of the
+engine.
+All the four box girders of main bearings were connected
+together by water pipes at the level of the side members
+of the bed plate.
+The pipes connecting the first with the
+second, and the third with fourth main bearing? were on the
+off side of the engine, whereas the pipe between the second and
+third bearings was on the near side of the engine.
+The whole of the cooling water circulated through the bearings before entering the water jackets of the cylinder.
+Means were also provided for the cooling of the lubricating circulating oil in the forced system.
+For that purpose the delivery pipe from
+the oil pump passed through the water pipe between the first
+and second main bearings. The lubrication of all the crank-
+pins including that of the compressor overthrow at the forward
+end of crankshaft, w'as of the banjo ring type, part of the oil
+from the main bearings dropping into the rings. The lubrication
+of the cylinders, air compressors and gudgeon pins was by
+a mechanical lubricator. To collect the oil at the bottom of
+the bed plate a thin sheet steel undershield was provided with
+a sump at the forward end containing the oil strainer and oil
+pump. To prevent splashing of oil the large openings in the
+crankcase were covered with detachable sheet steel covers.
+In the design of the cylinders racing motor car practice was
+followed in many respects. Each block was of cast iron with
+heads and liners forming an integral part of the cylinder.
+But the water jackets were of thin sheet copper screwed to the
+flanges on the cylinder walls. Each cylinder had the usual
+assortment of valves (inlet, exhaust, starting and fuel valves),
+actuated from an overhead ball-bearing camshaft driven from
+the vertical shaft already mentioned. The inlet and exhaust
+valves were directly below their respective cams, and therefore
+had no rockers or levers of any kind, the cams actuating
+these valves through the usual type of motor car tappets (Fig.
+). The starting valve situated vertically between the inlet and exhaust valves on one side of the cylinder, was actuated
+by a bell crank rocking lever, w'hile the inclined fuel valve
+had two bell crank rockers connected by a link. The design
+of the pulveriser of the fuel valve required special study, so
+as to obviate one-sided injection of fuel into the cylinder, and
+means were provided to push the fuel by blast air in the direction
+opposite to that it had the tendency to take. The fire
+plate had a horizontal fan-shaped opening, so as to spread the
+fuel right across the combustion chamber towards the centre of
+the piston top. It is a known fact that in high speed engines,
+owing to the inherent restriction in the size of valves, the
+exhaust valve works under very unfavourable conditions, as
+exhaust gases of very high velocity and of considerably high
+temperature go past it, causing the usual overheating of the
+exhaust valve. To obviate this drawback, small exhaust ports
+were provided in the lower part of the cylinders of that engine,
+which ports were uncovered by the piston at the lower part of tlie stroke, so that the hot exhaust gases could escape through
+the ports, leaving comparatively cooled exhaust products at
+a much lower pressure to be expelled through the exhaust
+valve. The water cooled exhaust pipe was connected with
+both the exhaust valves and exhaust ports. There was one
+fuel pump for each pair of cylinders, and the three pumps
+were combined in one group driven from the rear end of the
+camshaft. A flywheel centrifugal governor controlled the speed of the engine by altering the lift of the suction valves
+of the fuel pumps. As the engine was driving the submarine
+on the Del-Proposto system, a hand regulation for the fuel
+pump was also necessary for ahead running, a handwheel at
+the rear end of the engine having been provided for the pur pose. The starting and fuel valves were put in and out of the
+action by the usual eccentric shaft arrangement controlled bv
+the starting lever. The whole of the camshaft, rockers and
+tappets were enclosed in an aluminium casing containing the
+four ball bearings of the camshaft and the thrust bearing
+taking the end thrust of the skew gear of the vertical shaft.
+That casing had three detachable covers and was hinged, so
+that in case valve inspection was necessary, only four pins and
+the coupling at the upper part of vertical shaft had to be taken
+away and the whole of camshaft could be swung clear of the
+valves. The engines of that type had a two-stage air compressor
+driven from the forward end of the crankshaft, but in
+the two first engines the L.P. stage had only one delivery
+(ring type) valve, the suction air entering from the inside of
+the crankcase into the compressor cylinder through ports at the
+lower end of the cylinder. The high pressure stage had a combined
+suction delivery ring type valve. This design considerably
+simplified the compressor, but it had also its drawbacks
+which soon made themselves felt in service. The air
+drawn into the L.P. stage was not clean atmospheric air, but
+air mixed with an oil vapour, which usually was contained
+inside an enclosed crankcase of a high speed Diesel engine.
+Admission of such oily mixture into the compressor was very
+undesirable as the oil was likely to ignite inside the air receivers
+between the stages and cause a possible explosion in the
+coils. To counteract partially this drawback there was a
+drain provided at the lowest point of the intermediate cooling
+coil, which, combined with the downward path of air in the
+cooler, was supposed to clean the air enough to obviate the
+likelihood of an explosion. However, such an explosion occurred
+in service, and therefore new compressors were fitted
+to all these engines, having L.P. suction valves connected
+direct with the atmosphere and the air cooling coils were removed
+from the compressor jackets into a separate box fixed
+at the side of the engine.
+The copper jackets also proved to be slightly leaky in service,
+and the last three engines were built with thin cast iron
+jackets cast integral with cylinder block in the usual motor
+car style. Gradually all engines of that type had their copper
+jacketed cylinders replaced by those of new design. The fuel
+consumption at full load of these engines was 215 gram (0-475
+lbs.) per b.h.p. hour at normal speed. Beside submarine use
+four of such engines were fitted as auxiliary sets into the Russian steam driven transport ''Xenia'' (mother-ship for submarines
+of ''Ssom'' class), the reason for this being to have identical
+engines in the whole of the flotilla, so as to facilitate replacement
+of spare parts.
+The submarines of the ''Makrel'' class had four-cylinder non-
+reversible Diesel engines of' 120 b.h.p. installed to replace
+the old petrol engines. The short length of engine room prevented
+the installation of the six-cylinder engines of 160 b.h.p.,
+in order to give a higher speed and therefore the old h.p. was
+retained, giving the boat a speed of 6|-7 knots on surface.
+These 120 b.h.p. engines were of a slightly different and
+heavier design than the six-cylinder engines described above.
+The cylinders were cast in pairs, the heads and water jackets
+forming an integral part of them. Large inspection doors on
+both sides of the jackets were provided to facilitate cleaning of
+water spaces. The two blocks of cylinders were fastened by
+studs to a light cast iron crankcase having detachable aluminium
+covers to prevent oil splashing. The bedplate was also
+of cast iron with three cross members containing the water-
+cooled main bearings (Figs. 23 and 24.) The crankcase was relieved of tensile stresses in a manner similar to the
+b.h.p. type, and also had a light sheet steel undershield.
+The lubrication of the cylinders and air compressor was by
+means of the usual mechanical lubricator, whereas that of the
+main bearings and crank pin was similar to the engines of the
+''Ssom'' class boats; the circulating oil was cooled bv a cooler
+placed alongside the bedplate of the engine.
+The cooling water was circulated through the main bearings and cylinder water jackets by means of a gear driven from the forward end of camshaft.
+The camshaft was enclosed in the
+crankcase and was driven from the crankshaft by spur gearing
+at the rear end of the engine. The cylinder diameter of these
+engines was 250 m/m. (9 |in.) and stroke 300 m/m.
+(11 13/16th ins.), the full power of 120 b.h.p. being developed
+at 450 r.p.m. The two-stage air compressor was similar in design and method of drive to the improved type of' 160 b.h.p.
+compressor. The two air coolers were separate and bolted to
+the off side of the engine. The four valves were on the top
+part of the cylinder, the inlet and exhaust opening vertically
+downwards, whereas the starting and fuel valves were inclined
+at 45° to the vertical. All these valves were actuated from
+the camshaft by means of the usual motor car type tappets
+and push rods. Auxiliary exhaust ports were also provided
+with an exhaust manifold similar to that of the ''Ssom'' class
+engines. The two eccentric shafts controlling the throwing
+in and out of action of the starting and fuel valves were on
+top of the cylinder, and each shaft controlled two cylinders by
+means of a small hand lever, seen near the top between the
+cylinder blocks. In order to assist the ventilation of the
+crankcase, part of the cylinder suction working air was taken
+from the crankcase, suitable baffle plates having been provided
+to prevent lubricating oil being- sucked into the cylinders.
+For this purpose three copper pipes having a number of slots,
+connected the inlet valve chambers with the crankcase. A
+similar arrangement was also provided in the 160 b.li.p.
+engines of the ''Ssovi'' type. The four fuel pumps were grouped
+together between the two cylinder blocks above the camshaft
+from which they were driven. A band lever at the rear end
+of the engine controlled through suitable gearing the amount
+of fuel delivered by the fuel pumps to the cylinders. To prevent
+racing of the engine a centrifugal governor of the Jahns’
+type was driven from the rear end of the engine. In the case
+of both types of engines (120 b.h.p. and 160 b.h.p.) the uncooled
+pistons were of cast iron, having five piston rings and
+no scraper rings at the lower end of the piston skirt. The connecting
+rods of I. section were forgings of nickel steel,
+machined all over, while the chrome-nickel steel crankshafts
+were machined from the solid. The fuel consumption of that
+b.h.p. ennine was 215 gram (0-475 lbs.) per b.h.p. and
+the weight of the complete engine 3,220 kg. (7,100 lbs.) or
+-8 kg. (59 lbs.) per b.h.p. Besides submarines, this size of
+engine was put in several small minelayers, tugs and in the
+revenue cruiser ''Control'' of the Baku Custom House. The
+overall dimensions of that ship were: length B.P. 72ft. Oins,
+breadth md. 14ft., depth md. 6ft. 6ins., and loaded draught
+ft. 3ins. The engine of the submarine ''Delphin'' was a combination
+of designs of the 160 b.h.p. and 120 b.h.p. types. It
+was a six cylinder noil-reversible set of the same cylinder
+dimensions as the 120 b.h.p. type (D = 250 m/m. (9|ins.) x S =
+(11 13/ 16th ins.) but of slightly higher piston speed, the
+r.p.m. being 500, which gave it a power output of 220 b.h.p.
+(Figs. 25 and 26). The cylinder design as well as that of the
+bedplate, crankshaft, connecting rods, piston and compressor
+was similar to the 120 b.h.p. type, but the valves, though in
+arrangement similar to the above-mentioned type, were actuated by rockers from an overhead camshaft driven from an inclined shaft at the rear of the engine. This camshaft was not of the hinged type, but was supported on ball bearings by four brackets bolted to the cylinder tops, the cams working in an oil bath. The eccentric shaft was in one piece actuated from a hand lever at the front end of the engine, thus putting all six cylinders on fuel at once during the starting operation. A centrifugal governor was mounted on the inclined shaft and the fuel lever, placed near by, controlled the fuel pumps, six in number, grouped together at the rear of the crankcase and driven by bevel gearing from the inclined shaft. The crankcase was of very light scantlings and of cast iron with large aluminium inspection doors, which were easily detachable. The weight of the engine'was 4,275 kg. (9,440 lbs.) or 19,4 kg per b.h.p. The duty of the governor was to prevent excessive racing' of the engine when the clutch was released or when the dynamo was running' at no load. During tests of instantaneous throwing off the load from full to no load, the engine speed increased momentarily to 565 r.p.m. and then settled down to 545 r.p.m., which was the speed for no load running of the engine. In table II. are given the principal results of the official 12 hoiirs non-stop trials of that engine made in 1912.
+Owing to the shallow and undulating coast line of Russia
+in the Baltic Sea, it was necessary to have small size submarines,
+which could navigate those waters, and that explains
+the reason why the submarines of the ''Ssom'' and ''Makrel'' class
+were retained during the war when most other nations built
+only quite large sea-going submarines. The Russian Navy
+had a good number of large submarines also, fitted mostly with, two-stroke engines, but even the small submarines were
+often operating near the coast of Germany, as could be instanced
+by the case of submarine ''Oltun'' ''(Makrel'' class) which
+sank a German battleship off Danzig in 1916. The abovedescribed
+Diesel engines were not the smallest type submarine
+engines built by Nobels. In 1914-three 50 b.h.p. four-cylinder
+non-reversible Diesel engines were made, running at 500 r.p.m.
+These engines were fitted in three 35-ton submarines, giving
+them a speed of 6j knots. These submarines were designed
+for the defence of the approaches to Cronstadt, and, if necessary,
+could be taken on board ship for transportation. The crew of
+these submarines consisted of five men all told, and the headroom
+available was so small that a tall man had to move inside
+the boat in a bent position. The cylinder dimensions of
+these small engines were : diameter 170 m/m. (6 11/16tli ins.)
+and stroke 220 m/m. (8 11 / 16th ins.) In general design they
+were a copy of the 120 b.h.p. type on a smaller scale. The
+weight of these engines was 910 kg. (2,000 lbs.) or 18-2 kg.
+(40-2 lbs.) per b.h.p. A slightly modified type of such engines
+using six cylinders in three blocks of two, the cylinder diameter
+being 180 m/m. (7 l/16th ins.) and stroke 230 m/m.
+(9 1 16th ins.) and developing 80 b.h.p. at 450 r.p.m., was
+fitted into several minelayers during the war (Fig. 27). Reverse gears were provided for astern motion. A very important
+point in connection with the design of these small and
+medium size high speed Diesel engines was that of crankcase
+ventilation. During the working of the engine, inside the
+crankcase an oil vapour accumulates, and if it is not expelled
+from the crankcase, an explosion may occur due to the ignition
+of that oil vapour when coming in contact with the underside
+of the hot uncooled piston head. To overcome this defect,
+part of the necessary suction air for the cylinders is drawn
+through the crankcase, thus sucking that vapour into the
+cylinders, and incidentally cooling the pistons by air. But
+this again has its disadvantages, because inside the crankcase,
+especially in forced feed lubricated engines, oil splashes all
+over the place and particles of such oil are drawn into the air
+suction pipe. The engine in such a case runs partially on
+fuel oil and partially 011 lubricating oil, with the result that
+the fuel oil consumption is considerably reduced, while the
+lubricating oil consumption is correspondingly increased. Besides
+the financial drawback, such running entails considerable
+risks, as, when there would be too much lubricating oil sucked
+into the cylinder, the engine might get out of control and race
+away, with consequent disastrous results. A system of carefully
+designed baffle plates should be fitted into the suction
+pipe, so as to arrest the particles of oil 011 their way up that
+pipe.
+A purely Diesel electric drive for warship propulsion was
+also made by Nobels in the case of the small converted cruiser
+''liynda.'' The reason for the adoption of the purely electric
+drive was that at the time the order was placed (1910) the
+Admiralty had many doubts as to the advisability of having
+reversible engines of 1,000 b.h.p. per shaft, considering that
+for a six-cylinder engine the cylinder dimensions would be
+prohibitive. This was contrary to Nobels ideas, who urged
+the Admiralty to adopt one reversible engine of 1,000 b.h.p.,
+as the ship was single screw. This, however, would have
+meant too many alterations in the engine room, which was
+very short, as a compound steam engine was there previously,
+and the boiler space could not be allotted for the Diesel installation,
+as it was to be used for other purposes. Eventually it
+was decided to put two high speed Diesel engines of 600 b.h.p.
+each direct coupled to 400 kw. D.C. generators, these generators supplying current to one slow speed electro-motor on the propeller shaft. In cylinder dimensions, D=450 m/m. and and S = 510 m/m. and general appearance the
+engines were similar to those of motor ship ''Robert Nobel,'' hut
+in order to get the necessary power output their piston speed
+was increased to 5-45 m./sec. (1,070 ft./min.) or 320 r.p.m.
+and the engines were of course not reversible. Owing to the
+adoption of the electric drive the weight of the engine had to
+be kept as low as possible, so as to come within reasonable
+total weight figures, and the main cast parts of the engines were
+steel castings with the exception of cylinder liners and
+pistons, which were of cast iron (Fig. 28). No flywheels were fitted, as the armature of the dynamo, weighing 4,850 kg. (4|
+tons) served as such. The weight of each engine proper was
+,750 kg. (23} tons) or 39-G kg. (87-5 lbs.) per b.h.p. Owing
+to the high power output per cylinder (150 b.h.p.) piston cooling
+had to be resorted to, and this was effected by circulating
+the forced feed oil in the piston heads via hollow connecting
+rods, the returning oil having been cooled in special separate
+coolers provided for the purpose below the engine room floor.
+The exhaust valves were water-cooled, as well as the exhaust
+pipe and main bearings. Two plunger circulating water
+pumps were driven from the forward end of the crankshaft, from which also was driven a two-stage tandem air compressor.
+The dimensions of that compressor were D-HP 9U m/m.
+(3 9/16th ins.) D-LP = 290 m/m. (11 7/ 16th ins.) and stroke
+m/m. (llins.) and the air cooler was separate and bolted
+to the side of the crankcase. Considerable trouble due to overheating
+of air was experienced with that type of compressor,
+so that it was replaced by a three-stage double tandem air compressor
+of the following dimensions: D-HP 55 m/m. (2 3/16tli
+ins.); D-IP 125 m/m. (4 15/ 16th ins.); D-LP 290 m/m.
+(11 T/ 16th ins.) and a common stroke of 280 m/m. (llins.).
+After that alteration the compressor troubles disappeared. It
+was the first time, in Russia at least, that a double tandem
+three-stage air compressor was applied to Diesel engines, but
+since then all Nobel Diesel marine engines, having compressors
+driven direct from the crankshaft, are fitted with such
+double tandem three-stage compressors. In table III. are
+given results of non-stop 100 hours duration official trials of
+these ''Rynda'' type engines.
+In 1912-1913 great extensions were made in the Naval Port
+of Sebastopol, on the Black Sea, including the building of a
+large dry dock to accommodate the new Russian battleships,
+then under construction. A pumping station of considerable
+power was built at the Dockyard. To prevent any damage to
+machinery by enemv fire, the plant was placed underground
+in casemates, protected by ferro-concrete and armour plates.
+Owing to this the space was limited, of course, and the power
+station of the plant was designed to have high speed Diesel
+engines, driving the various pumps by electricity. The
+Russian Admiralty expected war in the Black Sea, and therefore
+was anxious to have the pumping station in working order
+as soon as possible. As no firm could give quick enough delivery
+of a high speed Diesel electric plant of about 750 kw.
+aggregate output, the Admiralty sacrificed for the purpose
+the ''Rynda'' engines, which were put into that power station in
+, with all their electric gear, without any alteration.
+The cruiser ''Rynda'' was broken up just before the war.
+When the foiir Russian battleships of the ''Gangout'' class were
+designed it was decided to provide some Diesel generating sets,
+which could run in parallel with the steam turbine driven sets
+and supply current to various parts of the ship, including the
+electromotors for turning the gun turrets. The steam auxiliary
+plant consisted of four 320 KW. DC. dynamos fitted with A.C. stop rings and driven by De Laval steam turbines. The
+Diesel plant was of two sizes : the lighting plant and the power
+plant. The lighting plant consisted of three sets of 180 b.h.p.
+six-cylinder, four-stroke Diesel engines built by Felser Works
+of Riga. These engines were direct coupled to 120 I(W. DC.
+generators. The power plant consisted of two 320 KW. DC.
+generators, with A.C. slip rings, direct driven through a
+Voigt elastic coupling by a 480 b.h.p. Nobel Diesel engine
+(Fig. 29). The reason for the adoption of Voigt coupling was that the engine and dynamo bedplates were separate castings,
+not bolted together. These engines were placed in one engine
+room just in front of the rear gun turret and under the main
+protected deck. The cylinder dimensions were: diameter
+m/m. (14fins.) and stroke 430 m/m. (16 15/16th ins.) and
+the normal output of 480 b.h.p. was obtained in six cylinders
+at 320 r.p.m. The fuel consumption of the engines at full
+load w'as 195 grams (0-43 lbs.) per b.h.p. hour. The engines
+were non-reversible and in general outline followed the usual
+Nobel Diesel high speed medium power practice. A double
+tandem air compressor of equal dimensions to that of ''Rynda''
+engines, but of slightly shorter stroke (270 m/m.—lOfins.) was
+direct driven from the forward end of the crankshaft. The
+pistons were water-cooled bv means of a telescoping gear and
+the exhaust valves and exhaust pipes, silencers, and bearings 'were also water-cooled. The telescoping- gear consisted of a
+tubular bridge piece bolted to the piston skirt by the middle
+and having at the ends two vertical steel pipes well polished
+externally.
+These steel pipes moved up and down in gunmetal water
+receivers, the leakage of water was prevented by a gland.
+During navigation in the Baltic Sea, ordinary seawater was
+used for piston cooling, as the salt contents in the water was
+small, but during ocean voyages, the pistons were to be freshwater
+cooled, while the cylinder jackets, etc., had seawater
+cooling. The above-mentioned telescopic gear proved to be
+troublesome in services, as the tightness of the gland depended
+upon the perfectly vertical motion of the piston, ''i.e.,'' without
+any side play whatever. In practice this was impossible of
+achievement as the piston had to have some small play inside
+the cylinder, and that small play was large enough to loosen
+the glands, so that water used to spout past these glands into
+the bedplate. This was very undesirable, as the water was
+mixing with the circulating oil at the bottom of the bed plate
+and the emulsion was taken by the oil transfer pump to the day circulating oil tank and hence sent through the oil circulating system, with results which can easily be guessed. The author remembers such a case, while he was in charge of these
+auxiliary sets on board the battleship ''Sebastopol'' in 1S14 in
+the Baltic. The engines were supplying current for the turning
+of 12in. gun turrets, and after some time it was observed
+that emulsion got into the drip feeds. The situation was
+rather an unpleasant one, as the engines could not be stopped
+on any account. To continue the running of the engines on
+emulsion for some considerable time was also out of the question,
+therefore the only possible solution at that moment was to
+stop the circulating principle of lubrication and lubricate the
+bearings with fresh oil all the time, using the oil transfer
+pump to convey the emulsified oil from the bottom of the bedplate
+to an empty reserve oil tank near by, to which a suitable
+connection was improvised 011 the spot. After the emulsified
+oil had settled in that tank it was filtered, transferred to the
+day oil tank and used over again.
+After this experience it was decided to change over from the
+telescopic principle to the grasshopper type, which was later
+fitted to ail the eight engines and proved to be practically
+immune from trouble. After this reconstruction the ordinary
+circulating lubrication of bearings was again resorted to.
+The author had another interesting experience with these
+engines on hoard of all the four ships, and that was the effect
-Not counting a small 20 b.h.p. French Diesel engine fitted into a small canal barge in France, it is to Nobels that belongs the credit of having built in 1903 the first marine Diesel engine and in which the speed could be varied by hand. That engine was a four-cylinder one of “A” frame trunk piston type and developed 180 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were: Diameter 320 m/m.  and stroke 420 m/m. The outside view of the engine is shown in Fig. 2. Two such engines were fitted in 1904 into the motor-tank-ship Ssarmat, of the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co.
+of resonnance or vibrations of foundations due to minor unbalanced
-[[File:Nobel Fig 2.png|alt=Fig. 2. The first Marine Diesel Engine (1903), of the Motor Ship “ Ssarmat.”|thumb|Fig. 2. The first Marine Diesel Engine (1903), of the Motor Ship “ Ssarmat.”]]
+forces in the engines. It was found that when the
-The ''Ssarmat'' was a ship of 800 tons D.W. capacity and therefore of very humble dimensions as compared with present-day tankers of 15,000 tons. Her hull dimensions were: length B-P 244ft. 6 in., breadth md. 31 ft. 9in., and draught fully loaded 6 ft. She was built at the Ssormovo Shipyard, on the River Volga, and was suitable for both river and sea navigation. The engines were non-reversible and the necessary astern motion of the propeller shaft was obtained on the Del-Proposto system. That system consisted of a dynamo direct coupled to the engine crankshaft and an electromotor coupled to the propeller shaft, between those two was interposed a friction clutch. For ordinary ahead running the clutch was coupled in and the propeller was direct driven by the engine. The dynamo and electromotor were not working, but rotating simply as additional flywheels and the speed of the ship was regulated by the speed of the engine.
+two engines were running together at the same speed, vibrations
-For astern running the clutch was released, current switched on and the electromotor turned the propeller shaft in a direction opposite to that of the engine (Fig. 3). The engine was run at constant speed, whereas the electromotor could be run at variable speed, thus regulating the speed of the ship. The ''Ssarmat'' has been in commission for nineteen years, having- still the original engines (Fig. 4). A sister ship to the ''Ssarmat,'' named ''Vandal,'' was built at the Ssormovo yard a year before the former, and was also fitted with four-stroke Diesel engines, but of the ordinary stationary type, the propeller shaft drive being purely Diesel-electric. These engines had direct coupled dynamos, which supplied current to electromotors on the propeller shafts. Three of such three cylinder engines, built by the works now owned by the New Atlas-Diesel Co., of Stockholm, were fitted into the ''Vandal.'' The cylinder dimensions
+of certain amplitude were set up in their foundations,
-were : diameter 290 m/m and stroke 430 m/m. , each engine developing 120 b.h.p. at 240 r.p.m. The ''Vandal'' and the ''Ssarmat'' were actually the two first motorships in the world, and, although comparatively little publicity was given as to their performance, it must be said that they played a very important part in the development of motor-shipbuilding in Russia. The fact that the two motorships in those days could maintain a regular service for single voyages of over 3,000 miles long, year in and year out, carrying petroleum in bulk, set many Russian shipowners thinking, and the performance of these two ships was closely watched. The behaviour of these two ships in service was so satisfactory that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company had decided then to convert the whole of their steam fleet into motor ships. Such a conversion was probably the biggest one ever yet undertaken, as the tonnage of the fleet was over 650,000 tons D.W., and some of the tankers were of 10,000 tons D.W. capacity. The programme was arranged for the gradual conversion of ships, starting with tugs and the smaller tankers first. As the conversion could not be accomplished by the Nobel Works alone, because they wsre very busy with naval orders, part of the conversion work was given over to the Kolomna Works in Golutwin, who were Nobels’ licensees. These two firms supplied the bulk of the engines for the fleet, but a few ships were fitted with engines purchased abroad. In many cases quite good triple expansion steam engines had been removed and replaced by Diesels. It was expected that by 1924 the conversion would have been completed, but unfortunately the outbreak of the war in 1914 and of the Russian revolution in 1917, completely upset the programme, as in 1918 the Bolsheviks had “nationalised ” the Nobel fleet, with the result that only a comparatively small number of old tankers are running at present. It is of interest to note however, that of the two first marine Diesel installations, that of the ''Xsarmat'' with Del-Proposto drive, proved to be more reliable and economical than that of the ''Vandal,'' which had a Diesel electric drive. The ''Vandal'' was broken up in 1913. The replacement of steam machinery in paddle tugs by Diesels required a considerable amount of ingenuity, as the speed of the paddles was so much below the slowest normal speed of Diesel engines and it naturally required the adoption of some sort of reduction gear. It was out of the question, of course, to put slow speed land type engines, as tliey were much too heavy and cumbersome for the weak hulls of the river tugs. A special type of high-speed light multi-cylinder direct reversible engine had to be designed for the purpose. In 190T such an engine was already on the test bed at the Nobel Works and it developed 120 b.h.p. in three cylinders at 400 r.p.m. The cylinder dimensions were : diameter 275 m/m. and stroke 300 m/m.
+and when the two amplitudes synchronised, the vibrations became
-(Fig. 5). It was of the enclosed crankcase type with a two-stage air compressor at the side of the engine, driven by rocking levers. This engine was the first direct reversible four-stroke Diesel engine ever built in the world. Reversing was performed through the shifting of cams by means of forks fitted to a layshaft and actuated by the liand-wheel seen in Fig. 5 near the top of the vertical shaft. Each cylinder had two sets of cams, and to allow for their shifting, the rocking levers of the valves had to be pressed down by means of the long hand lever seen on the top of the engine, so as to lift the rollers clear of the cams. This type of reverse gear is known as Carlsund’s gear. The manoeuvring lever is seen near the middle of the vertical shaft, and it actuated the lower lay- sliafu, which in its turn threw the starting and fuel valves in and out of gear when necessary. The manoeuvring lever could he rotated round a dial. The position of that lever shown in Fig. 5 is the “ Stop ” position, when the fuel and starting valves are out of gear. Two-stroke starting was provided, ''i.e.,'' admission of starting air was on every downward stroke, as otherwise with a three-cylinder four-stroke engine at certain crank positions no starting valve may he open. Turning the manoeuvring' lever clockwise, there came the first “ Start” position, when the three cylinders were working on air, then came tlie second “ Start ” position, when the first cylinder was on fuel, and the other two 011 air, then the third “ Start ” position, when two cylinders were on fuel and the third 011 air and finally came the “ Work ” position when all the three cylinders were working 011 fuel. This type of starting gear was the invention of Mr. Nordstroem, of Nobels (Nordstroem’s patent, Sweden, 1907). The fuel regulation could be performed in two ways, firstly by a small hand-wheel at the lower end of the vertical shaft, which could vary the tension of springs of the centrifugal governor and secondly by a small hand lever, which controlled the lift of the suction valves of the fuel pumps. The lubrication of the engine was of three kinds: forced for cylinders nd air compressors, by means of a mechanical lubricator and gravity for main bearings, which were watercooled, whereas the crankpins had banjo ring lubrication. Two of such engines were installed in the Russian submarine Minoga, in 1908, and it may be stated that the above submarine, though comparatively ancient as submarines go, did very good work during the great war. A number of these engines were built for naval purposes as well as merchant marine, and, in the 11011-reversible design as lighting sets in ships and as stand-by engines in power stations. In Table I. are given results of official 120 hour trials carried out by Professor N. Bykoff, of Petrograd Institute of Technology upon “Minoga” engines in 1908. This type of engine, however, was too small and of too high a speed to work satisfactorily in the paddle tugs, and therefore a more powerful engine of similar design was brought out in 1908. The design of that new engine was later standardised, and it was produced in three, four and six cylinder models. Besides river paddle tugs, that engine was fitted in 1909 into the Russian submarine A Aula (three four-cylinder sets of -300 b.h.p. each at 3T5 r.p.m.) That, engine in general appearance was similar to the “ Minoga” engines, with the exception that in some of the later engines tandem air compressors were direct driven from the forward end of the crankshaft. The reverse gear in that type of engine was simplified—the shifting of cams having been performed by a hand lever that actuated the layshaft, instead of by the handwheel as was on the “ Minoga ” engines. On the later engines of the “Minoga” type the reverse gear was also altered to hand lever cam shifting and a tandem air compressor was fitted at the forward end of the crankshaft.
+so pronounced that it was quite unpleasant to stand on
-The paddle tugs had their engines placed transversely, ''i.e.,'' parallel to the paddle shafts. In the case of larger tugs two direct reversible engines were fitted, driving the shafts through electro-magnetic clutches. The Nobel Bros, motor tug ''Ssamoyed,'' was a typical example of this class of river tugs. She was built in 1909 for service on the upper reaches of the River Volga and Northern Canal system for the towing of oil barges. The hull dimensions were : length B-P. 132ft. 9ins., breadth md. 19ft., depth md. 8ft. 3ins., draught 3ft. 3ins.,
+the engine room floor. The remedy for it was found in the
-D.W. capacity 10 tons, and Cargo towing capacity 3,200 tons. She had two three-cvlinder reversible four-stroke engines, developing each 140 b.h.p. at 260 r.p.m., whereas the paddles turned at 35 r.p.m. The paddle shafts were separate, each
+running of engines at different speeds (one at 323 r.p.m. and
-engine driving through an electric-magnetic clutch one paddle
+the other at 318 r.p.m.), when these vibrations disappeared.
-only, which considerably added to the manoeuvring qualities
-of the tug. The necessary speed reduction was obtained
+With the description of this type of engine closes the chapter
-through herringbone gears of the Citroen type (Fig. 6). The
+of the four-stroke Nobel Diesel engines, as no more new types
-cylinder dimensions of' these engines were : diameter 330 m m.
+of four-stroke engines were built by Nobels after those, all the
-(13ins.) and stroke 380 m/m. (15ins.). Motor tug ''Lesgin,''
+new types being of the two-stroke cycle; to the description of
-built in 1910 for the same owners, had two four cylinder engines of the above type developing 200 b.h.p. each, as the
+which engines the author will proceed at next meeting, as it
-size of the boat was larger (90 tons D.W., 4,800 tons tow% L.
+is considered more desirable to do so and invite discussion on
-ft., B. 27ft., 1). 8ft. and draught 2ft. 4ins.). The drive
+each.
-from the engines to the paddle shafts was through Dohmen-
-Leblanc clutches and Citroen gears (Fig. 7). Motor tug
+The '''C h a ir m a n''' : The paper to-night is historical. Some of
-''Ossetin'' (Fig. 8) of slightly smaller dimensions than the
+those present will probably find points for discussion, particularly
-''Lesgin,'' was fitted also with two four-cylinder 200 b.h.p.
+those who are opposed to the! four-stroke type of engine.
-engines, but these were placed longitudinally side by side,
+I notice that in the last paragraph the author states that Messrs.
-driving through Dohmen-Leblanc clutches two propeller
+Nobel have given up the manufacture of the four-stroke engine
-shafts (Fig. 9). The speed of the engines was 270 r.p.m. These
+in favour of the two-stroke.
-twTo larger sized tugs and their sister ships were used for towing
-purposes on the lower reaches of the Volga. The first motor
+Mr. W. H amilton Martin : Mr. Steinheil’s paper lias given
-tug on the Volga was the ''Belomor,'' built in 1908. She was
+us some interesting historical facts about the early achievements
-smaller than the above-mentioned tugs, her dimensions being:
+of the Nobel firm on the Diesel engine. What the
-eight tons D.W. capacity, 1,600 tons tow, L. 110ft. Gin., B. 17ft., I). 8ft., draught 3ft. 3ins. Only one reversible three-
+author tells us does not readily invite discussion, but it certainly
-cyliiuler engine of 140 b.h.p. was fitted, driving a paddle
+leads one back to the days when the marine Diesel engine was
-shaft common to both paddles through an electric-magnetic clutch and Citroen gears. This arrangement of solid paddle
+in its infancy. Many were the difficulties met and overcome,
-shaft had the drawback that both paddles could only be turned
+and great was the prejudice encountered by Dr. Rudolf Diesel
-in one direction at a time and therefore for the turning of the ship only the rudder was available. In 1911-1912 three
+and his assistants while devoting untiring energy and capital to
-slightly larger single engine paddle tugs were built for the
+the perfecting of his engine for both land and marine use.
-service on the Vistula in Poland. They were called the ''Mazur,''
-''Poliak,'' and ''Mad jar'' (Fig. 10). They were captured by the Germans during the war and used by them for army purposes,
+Thanks to the wide circle of friends which my father had, and
-upon the signing of the \ ersailles peace treaty these tugs were
+the way in which I was always taken by him to join in the discussions
-returned to their rightful owners, and are now in service again.
+on matters of future interest, I had the privilege of
-In Fig. 11 is shown the engine of motor tug ''Mazur.'' It is interesting to note, as a special proof of the economy of the
+meeting the late Dr. Diesel several times. My father was one
-motorship, that the Nobel Bros. Petroleum Production Company
+of the engineers who took out an early licence for building the
-found it cheaper to carry their oil from Baku on the
+two-cycle marine Diesel engines at the Flushing Royal Dockyard,
-Caspian Sea to Warsaw on the Vistida, via Astrakhan, Volga,
+Holland, of which lie was the Engineering Manager from
-Northern Canal System, Neva, Petrograd, Finnish Gulf, and
+its foundation in 1875.
-the Baltic Sea into Vistula, a total distance of 3,200 miles,
-instead of using railways, the distance in the latter case being
+We had many very interesting conversations with Dr. Diesel before deciding to take up the building of his engines, now nearly 15 years ago, and I recollect how even then Dr. Diesel repeatedly referred to the fine results obtained by the Nobel firm in Russia.
-only 1,900 miles. Considerable amount of trouble was experienced
+If I may make a slight digression, I would like to mention
-at the beginning with the above mentioned Citroen type
+here that three 1,000 K.W. dynamos, driven by six-cylinder
-of gear drive, the fault having been not with the gears themselves,
+Diesel engines, were some time after installed at the Flushing
-but with the design of the arrangement of machinery in
+Dockyard by my father instead of the old steam plant for driving
-the ship. The hulls and engine foundations of river paddle
+the entire yard. This was just prior to the war, and when
-tugs and boats in general, were made very light as the water
+soon after we had the coal famine in Holland, our yard with
-surface was usually smooth and the inertia forces of slow speed
+its plentiful oil supply, thanks to foresight, could carry on
-(25-40 r.p.m.) horizontal paddle steam engines were quite
+where others had to slow down on close altogether. This power
-negligible. With the adoption of Diesel propulsion the conditions
+house has proved a great success. I may add that my father
-become quite altered, as the comparatively highspeed
+made several suggestions, which were gratefully accepted, for
-vertical Diesel engine with its heavy pistons and connecting
+converting tlie inherently somewhat stationary type of Diesel
-rods was likely to set up considerable vibrations in the
+engine into a more suitable marine job. He very soon substituted
-foundations and in the hull, especially if the inertia forces
+solid drawn steel tubing and conical unions for copper
-were not properly balanced and the period of engine vibrations
+piping with brazed joints for the fuel injection line, which was
-synchronised with that of the hull. Such vibrations were likely to cause deformations in the hull structure, so that the
+always giving out, not being able to stand the vibration. He
-gears could get out of alignment, sometimes with disastrous © © © 1
+also did away with silencers altogether, and substituted a light
-results. The author remembers having seen a breakdown of
+water-cooled valve which has since been adopted as standard
-such gears in one of the earlier tugs, due to the above-mentioned © © '
+in a certain Continental Navy’s Submarine Service; he devised
-cause, when the teeth of the large wheel were stripped clean
+a. simple fuel injection pump which allowed of close speed regulation
-off. This difficulty was eventually overcome by a suitable
+and assured equal fuel supply to all working cylinders,
-design of the hull and strengthened engine foundations, combined
+and made various other practical improvements.
-with a better system of' balancing of engines. It is not
-the intention of the author to go into the question of engine
+In consequence of our relations with Dr. Diesel I had the
-balancing and hull vibrations in this paper, as the subject is
+privilege of working for some time at the M.A.N. Works at
-too important and voluminous, and it could easily form a paper
+Nurnberg, as assistant in their testing department for highspeed
-by itself. During the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905 the
+marine Diesels, which were then mostly fitted in submarines
-water communications of the Russian armies in the Far East
+or gunboats in sizes from 200 to 1,200 B.H.P., of three,
-were very much hampered bv bands of lawless Khunghuses,
+four, or six cylinders, all two-cycle. These people were continually
-who attacked defenceless tugs and barges on the River Amour,
+carrying out costly experiments for Dr. Diesel on
-causing considerable delays in the delivery of supplies and
+cylinder and piston head formations, scavenge, exhaust, and
-munitions. In order to bring these brigands to book the
+fuel valves, cast iron mixtures for cylinders, etc.
-Russian Government commandeered several river steamers and
-converted them into some sort of river gunboats, bv arming
+I went through many of their marine engine “ teething ”
-them with small naval guns and maeliins guns. These boats
+troubles with them, and gradually saw most of these cured on
-helped a lot to stop looting, and even policed the river after the conclusion of war in peace time. But as these boats had
+severe endurance tests. Later on I saw several of these engines
-log-fired boilers and only a limited supply of wood could be
+giving satisfactory service, also during war service.
-taken 011 board at a time, it was decided in 190G to build eight
+The Nobel people had by then, however, already passedi
-new river monitors, armed with two Gin. Q.F. and four 4-Tin.
+through most of their troubles, and had actually been successfully
-Q.F. guns, and driven by Diesel engines, which would give them
+running reversible units in Russian tugs and submarines.
-the ability of making long runs without replenishing their
+Speaking of tugs, we arranged with the makers to have a
-fuel tanks. The total power of the engines per ship was estimated
+h.p. six-cylinder two-cycle engined tug boat, the ''.Xirrn-''
-to be 1,000 b.h.p., which was to give the ship a speed
+''berg,'' in use some time in the dockyard at Mushing. She had
-of 11 knots. The order for all these engines was secured by
+magnetic clutch as the Nobel’s fitted in theirs, and consequently,
-Nobels, but as the Admiralty was in a hurry to get the ships
+when picking up a string of barges on a river or tidal
-ready as soon as possible, it was decided not to wait until the
+basin with current, this job often proved a more profitable one
-completion of the tests of the reversible engines, but fit in
+for the tow-rope suppliers than for the tug owners.
-non-reversible engines with a Del-Proposto drive. Every
+The cushioning effect of steam when taking up the tow-strain will take a lot of beating, but the idea of fitting a magnetic or friction clutch ought to solve the question of gradually picking up the load. Without a clutch one could best compare the flexibility at starting of oil and steam power with a horse which jerks, when starting a loaded cart, and a span of oxen which slowly but steadily lean, as it were, against their yoke when commencing to move.
-monitor got four engines of 250 b.h.p. each in four cylinders
+This tug was eventually sold to the German Navy at Kiel for instruction purposes of their submarine engineers, for which it has no doubt proved eminently suitable.
-running at 350 r.p.m., the engine being similar in other respects
+While at Numberg I met an engineer officer of the Russian Navy who was taking delivery there of some 1,100 B.H.P. two-cycle Diesel engines made presumably for Russian gunboats. Through the outbreak of war, however, these went into German submarines. His wonderful experience in the running of Diesel engines in those early days I have always envied. The inevitable result was, however, that this officer proved a relentless inspector. I remember his examining all finished cylinders and piston heads minutely with a strong lens, for hair-cracks or small flaws, after which they had to be kept for 24 hours under hydraulic preassure twice the working preassure.
-to the tug engines of Nobel Bros. C'o. As the whole
+I understood these were the Russian Admiralty’s test standards. Batches of a dozen or so fully finished cylinders or piston heads were rejected by him at a time, many of which would probably have been good enough for an appreciable amount of running. I did not envy the builders having that inspector!
-contract of 32 engines could not be finished by Nobels in time,
+These requirements no doubt led to the fact that the M.A.N. people soon made the finest cylinder head castings, and many of their later licencees preferred to order these parts from them. Their foundrymen were at the time earning as much as 90 to 100 marks a week, then ''£5,'' which in those days was very high pay indeed for such work. If Messrs. Nobel have had to contend with similar rigorous inspections in Russia and still managed to get such success in those days, it speaks all the more for their pluck and determination to have achieved all the work which has just been shown to us so ably by Mr. Steinheil.
-a half of that number was given over to the Kolomna Works,
+Before ending, the following observation may be of interest; I just happened to notice in the ''Motorship'' year book of this year that from 1904 to 1911, out of the existing twenty-one motorships of the world, nineteen were Nobel and Kolomna engined.
-who built those engines from Nobels’ drawings. The hulls of
+The other two were—one in 1910, the tugboat ''"Nurnberg",'' which I mentioned, fitted with M.A.N. engines, and the other the ''"Vulcanus",'' fitted with Werkspoor engines.
-these eight monitors (known as “Shkwal” class) (Fig. 12) were built at the Baltic Shipyard in Petrograd, and were sent
-in pieces to an erecting yard 011 the River Amour, where they were assembled. The first monitor, ''Shkwal,'' was ready in 1908, and after having undergone her trials in the Gulf of Finland, she was shipped in pieces to the Far East. Among the sea-going motor tankships can he mentioned Motorship ''Robert Nobel,'' of Nobel Bros. Petroleum Co. (Fig. 13. She was originally a twin-screw tank steamer of 1,700
 [[Category:Articles]]
+[[Category:Engines]]

The Evolution Of The Nobel Diesel Engine: Difference between revisions

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The Evolution of The Nobel Diesel Engine

Four-Stroke Nobel-Diesel Marine Engines.

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