Chapter 1356 Good news from the steam engine project team
The Northeast is mostly a land of bitter cold, and the situation becomes more so as you go north. It is better in the Liaohe River area, which is a plain area with rich water and grass, but other places, especially the areas to the north, are mostly bitter cold.
In this land, it is difficult for human beings to survive.
At the same time, the enemies entrenched in these places are just barbarians who are still in the savage stage, and cannot be compared with the Chahar Tribe, Duoyan Sanwei, etc. in the Liaohetao area.
Therefore, the Army has not invested much energy and resources in these areas and is still cleaning them up.
Nowadays, all the army's thoughts are focused on how to eliminate the Chahar tribe and the three Duoyan Guards in the Liaohetao Battle. Not to mention not paying attention to the battle in the Heilongjiang Basin, even the battle to capture the Shuangcheng Guards on the right wing.
Not paying much attention.
This is not only the idea of the army's top brass, but also Li Xuan's idea. Although the strategic goal of the Northeast Campaign is to reach Heilongjiang, the real core battle is actually around the Liaohetao area, the Chahar Division and the Duoyan Three Guards.
And carried out.
After killing the Chahar tribe and the three Duoyan guards, the rest of the battle can be regarded as a clearing operation at best. Its scale is not even as large as the bandit suppression operations carried out by the Imperial Army in the southwest and other inland areas in the early years. Everything that follows will be
It's a matter of course.
However, this is obviously not what the Navy has in mind. In order to increase its presence in the Northeast Campaign, the Navy spent its own money to develop a Heilongjiang battle plan. The Army was happy to see the Navy's actions come to fruition, and Li Xuan did not object.
, anyway, there are no large-scale actions by the navy now, and there are no enemies in the surrounding waters that the navy needs to face as powerful enemies. Even the Portuguese cannot pose any fatal threat to the Tang Navy in the Nanyang waters.
But if you want to go deep into the Indian Ocean or American waters, it is more difficult. Therefore, in the past few years, the navy has been looking for trouble everywhere, making trouble in Fuso, making trouble on various islands in Southeast Asia, and making trouble in Annan.
It's not because the navy is too busy, but to maintain a sense of presence.
The navy must give an explanation to the government and the opposition: it spends millions on military expenditures every year, and it must see some results, right?
Tell me, how much military expenditure does your navy spend every year on building so many warships, and what are they used for?
It would be fine if there were any powerful enemies that required your navy to be on top of them, but the key point is that there aren't any!
In the entire sea area of East Asia, including even the entire Pacific and Indian Ocean, the only ones who had the strength to fight against the Tang Navy were the Portuguese and Spanish.
Today, the Spaniards have a good relationship with the Tang Empire. The Tang Empire is even supporting the Spaniards in opening global shipping routes and opening important ports under the control of the Tang such as Banten, Luzon, and Gohe Prefecture.
As for the Portuguese, although there are many conflicts with the empire, these conflicts are more about conflicts of commercial interests. As for the Nanyang issue, the Portuguese have also adopted tolerant measures in recent years. As long as the Tang Empire
Continue to do business with them, and they ignore almost all the empire's actions in the Southeast Asia region.
Even in India, as long as the Tang Navy did not openly enter the Indian Ocean on a large scale, they would even turn a blind eye to the colonial activities of the Datang Western Trading Company in India. At most, they would pretend to be pirates and attack merchant ships.
Just kind of.
But until now, the Portuguese have not conducted any direct military operations against Go River State.
In other words, until today, the Tang Empire has maintained a relationship of coexistence of cooperation and competition with the other two maritime powers in the world: the Portuguese and Spain, and the possibility of a complete falling out is unlikely for the time being.
Under such circumstances, the Navy was still clamoring for more warships every day. In the 17th year of Xuanping, the Navy proposed the so-called "Hundred Ships Plan."
What is the 100-ship plan? It is to increase the navy's main fleet to more than 100 ships. This capital ship refers to cruisers, battleships, and frigates. If calculated in terms of tonnage, it is a capital ship of more than 400 tons!
According to this plan, the Imperial Navy needs to maintain fifteen battleships of more than 1,300 tons, twenty cruisers of more than 800 tons, and sixty-five frigates of more than 400 tons.
Nowadays, the Tang Imperial Navy only has six battleships in active service, and three more are under construction. This means that six new battleships are needed to achieve the goal.
As for cruisers, the Tang Empire currently has only twelve cruisers, which is still eight ships away from twenty.
As for frigates, there are already nearly fifty in number. However, many of the frigates and cruisers built in the early days of the empire have mediocre craftsmanship and design, and they have been in service for more than ten years.
As they are being retired one after another, they also need to be replenished one after another. After calculation, there are still about twenty ships left.
Such a huge fleet expansion plan is not so easy to achieve, because it is not just about building such a fleet of warships, but also maintaining the scale and normal use of the fleet, which means more fleet maintenance funds are needed.
More naval officers and soldiers are needed, more docks, docks, etc. are needed.
If one move affects the whole body, in the end, the total cost will be much more than just building these dozens of warships.
The navy's ambitions naturally require financial support, and today's navy's funds naturally cannot support such a large-scale expansion plan, and more funds are needed.
But funding is not so easy to come by. The government and the public must see what the navy has done with so much military expenditure, what achievements it has made, and what benefits it has brought to the empire!
Just seizing a few colonies and immigrating tens of thousands of people is not very convincing.
Therefore, the navy has set its long-term goal on the expansion of India, Australia, America and other places. But then again, it is more difficult to occupy these places and is unrealistic in the short term.
In desperation, the Navy could only find its presence in places like Northeastern Fusang in Nanyang.
Li Xuan knew about the navy's idea and supported it, but things came first and later. Now the empire's expansion direction is not to colonize overseas, but to completely solve the northern threat.
Only after the threats to the north and northwest were resolved, could the empire be free to develop a large-scale navy, and then compete with Spain and the Portuguese for places such as India and the Americas.
Now, it's too early.
In Li Xuan's plan, now is not the time to conquer India and America. He needs to wait until the high-pressure steam engine that can be used as transportation power matures, and trains and steamships are developed before he can start large-scale expansion.
when.
And this day won’t be too long!
Li Xuan now has the report from the Royal Institute of Technology in hand!
This report is a test report of the steam engine research and development project!
The test report said that when the high-pressure steam engine project team conducted an operation test on the eighteenth prototype, the prototype successfully achieved five hours of trouble-free continuous operation. During the test, it steadily output five horses.
, and the calorific value efficiency reaches 5%.
At the same time, the report also said that these five hours do not mean its limit, but the test plan is only five hours. They plan to conduct a second operational test after overhauling the prototype, and this
One time is twelve hours. If it can be reached, it will continue to be challenged for longer periods of time to test its limits.
These five hours of continuous trouble-free operation have basically reached the minimum goal set by the project team, and it is also the most important goal.
Because this five-hour continuous trouble-free operation time is based on the steam pressure of 0.35 MPa, which is more than three times that of the low-pressure steam engine.
Because of the increased steam pressure, the volume of this prototype is only one-twenty-fifth of that of a low-pressure steam engine with the same power transmission!
This one-twenty-fifth ratio is quite terrifying, because it means that steam engines can be miniaturized and lightweight, and then installed on ships and trains to be used as transportation power.
Even in industrial production, higher efficiency can be achieved because the efficiency conversion ratio reaches about 5%. This efficiency conversion ratio is higher than the 2% to 3% of traditional low-pressure steam engines.
About doubled.
The efficiency is doubled, which means that to obtain the same power, the coal required is doubled.
These performance indicators have been set long ago, and even the detailed design of each component of the high-pressure steam engine has been determined long ago. The only thing that troubles the researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology is how to build such a high-pressure steam engine!
In other words, what kind of materials should be used and what kind of process should be used to make it!
Materials and processing techniques are the core difficulties that trouble the production of high-pressure steam engines!
To this end, the Royal Institute of Technology has teamed up with the Navy and manufacturers directly under the Ministry of Enterprises of various countries to conduct various experiments unremittingly to find new materials that meet the requirements and better processing techniques.
All this was achieved on this prototype No. 18 fuselage!
Li Xuan looked at the experimental report and held back the excitement in his heart. He had already seen the dawn of the future industrial explosion from this steam engine.
Although steam engines have been used for a long time, high-pressure steam engines are incomparable to low-pressure steam engines!
Steam engines have already appeared, and are now widely used in major factories in the empire. Except for the initial use in mines, steam engines are now basically used in all large-scale factories.