What is better for a tank - gas turbine or diesel
DOMESTIC TANKU GIVEN THE “BLACK TAG”
We read with great interest the article by Mikhail Rastopshin “Broneillusion” (newspaper “Tomorrow”, No.38 (722) September 2007). A lot of facts, figures, and the result - everything is bad and very bad. Of course, I would like to tell “taxpayers” (the author of all of us calls this way) not in “general formulations” about all the novelties of tank weapons, protection and mobility, but apparently this is not done in the newspaper. Also, however, the “R & D results on the development of unified on-board information and control systems” for which the author is sad is not discussed, since they are "so far absent." Expositions of rastopshin are full of strong expressions: “degradation”, “traitorous mistake”, “deliverance from illusionists”, etc. To the question "What to do?"
But, we believe that the article does not have the main thing: M. Rastopshin, the candidate of technical sciences, could demand something “requiring accelerated development and deliverance from illusionists.”
We will not enter technical polemics with him here, although we have something to say. We will share impressions about the holiday from the day of tankers and some problems of tank building.
IMPRESSIONS AFTER THE TANKIST DAY
It is known that the tank has long been labeled - "born to crawl can not fly." This is not true - it can and not only fly, but also dance.
Russia, like the United States, is the only country with a unique technology of mass production of a gas turbine engine for tanks. T-80 tanks are successfully operated in a number of military districts, but especially in the Leningrad Military District. The explanation for this is simple - the tank was created and produced at the Kirov factory in St. Petersburg. Here, in due time, during the period of mastering the machines, the designer of the renowned team of the design bureau of the plant, headed by the General Designer Nikolai Popov, spent days and nights.
In one part of the Leningrad Military District, it has become a good tradition to demonstrate our military skills.
Tanks T-80BV dance "Gypsy"
At the festival, not only the beau monde of tank builders of St. Petersburg. Many young people, future warriors. Here is the command of the Leningrad Military District, bosses, veterans. It is interesting and instructive here - this is a real tank salon.
The apogee of the holiday was a show of technology. Tank warriors show what they have achieved. The results are impressive - some of the names of the aerobatics are worth a shot “in flight”, “tank waltz”, “gypsy”. Grandiose spectacle, when 46-ton monsters easily and gracefully to the music of an old waltz or an incendiary gypsy girl pirouettes to the applause of the audience. Gracefully stopping and shaking their gun trunks to the waltz beats, they rapidly pick up speed and lay steep turns.
You involuntarily compare these steps with the skill of pilots at the shows in aviation salons, I recall recent television footage from MAKS-2007. But that is in the air, in three-dimensional space, and this is on a plane - on the ground. And yet there is much in common - in the unusual movement of heavy combat vehicles and ease of movement. There is one more relationship with aviation - it is in the gas turbine engine. The T-80 is equipped with a 1250-strong gas turbine engine. Thanks to him, the tank has the highest power density among domestic and foreign vehicles. This makes it possible to have excellent dynamics, and the technical characteristics of the engine provide a high smoothness of the course and such a parameter unattainable for a diesel engine as uninterrupted. And other systems are at the highest world level - after all, the science of tank building is also in St. Petersburg: these are VNIITransmash scientists - the developers of the world's first lunar rover. Determines the success and the highest skill of the crews, especially the driver mechanics: senior warrant officers - R. Sidorenko and A. Gushchina.
Jump shot
Alexey Gushchin to the question: “Who would win the competition - the Abrams tank or the T-80?”, Said: “I know that Abrams has already fought and the engine is more powerful with him, but you need to meet him not in a fight, and on such shows and competitions. I think we will win, a very hard American. ” Applause of the audience, gifts of the chiefs became the award to the skill of the soldiers-tankers.
I want to believe that the tank salon can become a tradition of St. Petersburg tank builders, good examples are contagious. So, in fact, what to do? The first is to master the technique, improve the military skills "to shine".
From the Editors of “Valiance”: By the way, at the “tank biathlon” recently held in Alabino, the tank crews of the 4 Guards Kantemirovskaya division became real heroes of the event on their gas-turbine handsome T-80U, demonstrating the skill of masterfully driving their “eighty”. And all this was called briefly - “tank ballet”.
MODERNIZING JUMP
The second is what to do? This is the path that the whole armored world is following. Let us make an attempt to analyze one aspect of the well-known tank triad - the problem of mobility.
A tank, as a weapon system, is continuously developing, acquiring new qualities and properties, its combat capabilities are steadily increasing. For all the years of development of the domestic tank building, the caliber of the gun has increased almost 3,5 times, the tank mass is 6,5 times, and the engine power is 37 times. This is convincingly shown by the growth rates of engine power of tanks from other countries.
The tank is considered, first of all, as an offensive means, therefore the principles of its application are rigidly connected with the problems of providing movement and increasing mobility. At the same time, mobility is associated with the ability to evade defeat by improving acceleration and braking characteristics.
The gas turbine power plant (GTSU) has become one of the main factors ensuring the combat and operational and technical superiority of tanks (T-80, T-80) over the best domestic and foreign tanks. In addition to many years of military exploitation in Russia, the GDR, Poland, this is confirmed by comparative tests in Sweden and India (1993 – 1994), weapons and military equipment exhibitions in the UAE (1993 – 1995), and in Greece (1998).
At the same time, inadequate evaluation of operating experience is primarily focused on one of its characteristics - fuel consumption. It is possible that not everyone knows that in the latest modifications of this machine, a whole range of scientific and technical solutions has been implemented, which have reduced operating fuel consumption by more than 1,3 times. Calculations show that by bringing the gas temperature at the turbine inlet to 1316 – 1370 ° C (which is possible with ceramic materials), it’s realistic to get fuel consumption up to 86 g / kWh (117 g / hp). thermal efficiency - 53%. This changes the idea of the efficiency of a gas turbine.
The achieved performance is not the limit for the CCD. There are solutions (both theoretical and practical), which allow to achieve the values of fuel operating costs at the level of tanks with diesel engines of equal power.
CONSTRUCTIVE ADVANTAGES
There is no doubt that the competition between diesel and GTE will continue. Despite the work to further improve the diesel engine, it has a number of design features that make it difficult to significantly improve the level achieved:
• It is, above all, the need to convert the reciprocating motion of the piston into the rotational motion of the crankshaft. This, as a consequence, a large sliding friction on significant surfaces of the piston-sleeve. This is a non-stationary process of burning fuel in the cylinder during the working stroke. Note, however, that for the 4-stroke engine, only one of the four cycles is essentially “working”, and the rest are auxiliary.
With its mainly positive quality (specific fuel consumption), tank diesel will not remain uncompetitive in tank building for a long time, which is not only due to the listed disadvantages. Diesels with power over 1000 hp, in limited quantities of MTO, cause a lot of problems to ensure its operation without overheating.
• The liquid cooling system of a four-cycle diesel engine consumes from 15 to 20% of its power. In addition, the diesel requires 2 – 3% power to spend on cooling the oil.
It is known that the heat transfer of a two-stroke engine (6TD2) with a power 1200 hp is 420 thousand kcal / hour, and GTE (ed. "29") power 1250 HP - 48 thousand kcal / hour (almost 9 times less). This leads to increased cooling systems.
For the CCD, a characteristic that favorably distinguishes it from a diesel engine is the power “taken off” per unit volume of the engine. This parameter is better for GTE in 1,6. In this regard, the volume of the engine compartment in a tank with a GTE is smaller.
The significant superiority in overall power of the T-80 tank over the American Abrams tank is due to its increased dimensions of the power plant, due to the large volume of air cleaner.
Indicator overall power indicates not only the optimal layout of the logistics, but talks about the perfection of the systems and components of the power plant. The overall power of the MTO of the T-80 tank exceeds the overall capacity of the Leopard-2 tank by 2,2 times.
Increased MTO volumes of foreign tanks force the tank base to lengthen, increase the silhouette, add several tons of aggregate "excess" weight, thereby increasing the engine power costs by the added mass of the car, and on the other hand worsening mobility indicators. In this regard, let us compare the main overall indicators of tanks with the GTE of Russia and the USA in terms of the frontal (Sl) and lateral (Sб) projection area: T-80 - 7,1 and 12,2 sq.m, and М1А1 - 7,68 and 15,5 sq.m, respectively.
A certain amount of air is required to complete the work process. Since part of the air in the gas turbine engine is spent on cooling the combustion chamber, and the coefficient of excess air in the working process is also increased, the air demand for GTE is greater than for a diesel engine. And, despite the fact that for the combustion process air in a diesel engine is consumed less, its total amount (taking into account the cooling of the engine and transmission) is significantly increased. Let's compare this parameter with engines of tanks МХNUMX "Abrams" and "Leopard-1".
What is the conclusion? The increased (almost doubled) need for air, as well as the total heat emission increased several times, are followed by important consequences: the need to increase (almost threefold) the areas of radiators (heat exchangers), to increase the areas of suction louvers, (that is, to increase the weakened zones) .
OPERATIONAL BENEFITS
According to foreign sources, the cost of manufacturing a gas turbine engine (of the same power as a diesel engine) is about three times more. These indicators in the domestic engine-building industry were estimated somewhat differently (however, the comparisons were not sufficiently correct, since we did not make tank diesel engines the same as the GTE). We should not forget that cost indicators should be considered taking into account the operational costs of maintenance, repair and service life of the compared engines and their systems.
Let us present the results of the cost analysis of training and combat operation, based on data corresponding to the full service life of combat vehicles with gas turbine engines and a diesel engine (of the same power), conducted by MJCV (USA).
Operation in the military shows that the resource of a tank GTE is almost 2-3 times higher than that of diesel engines, due to balance and fewer parts.
According to foreign sources, estimates of the CCD resource are similar: according to MJCV (USA), the GT-601 GTE service life under combat conditions is equal to 3000 h, in peacetime to 10000 h.
Very important and such performance indicators:
• preparation time of the tank to work, especially the start of the CCD at low ambient temperatures, is several times less than that of a diesel engine;
• studies conducted abroad have found that the level of noise in a GTE is twice as low as a diesel engine.
If we consider that the laboriousness of the maintenance of the air cleaning and cooling system in the T-80 tank (and its modifications) is practically absent, then the advantages of the CCD are obvious.
ECOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES
Let us present the data on the level of toxicity of exhaust gases for transport gas turbine engines and diesel engines, obtained during operation in the state of California (USA).
The gas turbine engine of the T-80 tank is no alternative when operating in a zone with radioactive contamination. Radioactive particles emitted with exhaust gases do not come into contact (as it happens in a diesel engine) with oil and, therefore, do not enter the oil system, where a radiation source may occur.
It is also significant that the single-stage air cleaner of the T-80 tank, being an inertial device, does not trap radioactive particles in itself, unlike the two-stage barrier particles (in most diesel engines and the AGT-1500 engine) and throw them out with separated dust outside.
These findings were fully confirmed during the operation of the machine with the CCD in the accident area of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.
INSTEAD OF THE AFTERWORK
The tank with a gas turbine engine, ahead of its time, broke into the XXI century with a huge, inexhaustible potential. From the point of view of the active defense policy proclaimed by specialists, potential sources of future war, climatic and geographical features of domestic regions, the CCD is today an ideal power plant for present and future tanks. We emphasize that, starting from 1972 (up to and including 1986), control and troop tests were carried out regularly (KVI) of all types of tanks available. In the most difficult conditions of accelerated troop exploitation, complicating the requirements every year, expanding the geography of the tanks passed thousands of kilometers off-road, solving complicated shooting tasks and identifying weak (or, as they said before, “narrow” places) in design and technology.
According to the results of the CPI, each design bureau developed a complex of various measures aimed at eliminating the identified defects and improving the design. In other words, large-scale systematic work was organized, a kind of competition on a competitive basis. It is necessary to attribute to the merits of the GBTU that the most advanced constructive ideas “passed” from one brand of car to another.
KVI became a powerful incentive to improve and improve the quality of all types of tanks. Each KVI, as the competition of the best, assumed intrigue, revealed new unexpected "surprises", which were eliminated together and were under the control of GABTU specialists.
Nobody wanted to "hit the face in the dirt", each gave birth to technical masterpieces. Competition created an atmosphere of continuous improvement, and foreign tank builders were constantly forced to "catch up" with us.
Today, along with the development of next-generation tanks, foreign tank builders are actively engaged in the modernization of existing models. We are following the same path, the benefit of which is the modernization of our cars.
You should not constantly look back at the USA, the Americans are well aware that they do not need a combat vehicle weighing 60-70 tons. And it is not by chance that the new GTE LV-100 is being improved - an intensive search is underway for reducing the weight of the car.
With all the similarities of the two brands (T-90 and T-80U), they have their advantages and, of course, their disadvantages, and the one whose combat effectiveness machine will be more competitive will win.
Moreover, the organizational structures are also being improved. Following the example of aviation and naval organizations, a research and production holding was established on the basis of Uralvagonzavod that will not only unite the efforts of the BTV developers.
Despite the difficulties, primarily financial ones, among tank builders of Russia, there is a constant work both on the tank of the future and on the modernization of the existing fleet. The potential of domestic tank building is inexhaustible, and the stereotype about the systemic crisis of domestic tank building is untenable.
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