China Successfully Tests First Submarine Permanent Magnet Motor
(Source: China Military Online; issued Oct 25, 2017)
BEIJING --- China successfully tested its first permanent magnet propulsion motor for vessels recently, according to the State-owned China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC), which is known for manufacturing China's first aircraft carrier and the Jiaolong submersible vessel.
The CSIC released the news on its official WeChat public account that the No. 712 Research Institute of the CSIC successfully completed the test on its first permanent magnet propulsion motor for vessels on Oct 18 and all the performance indicators met the technical requirements.
It is said that the permanent magnet motor will greatly improve the mute performance of China's submarine, especially nuclear submarine, which means that, with the newly developed permanent magnet motor, the Chinese nuclear submarine is expected to become one of the world's quietest ones .
The news said the test of China's first permanent magnet motor with complete intellectual property rights achieved a successful result in Sanya City, south China's Hainan Province, at 11 am on October 18, laying a solid foundation for future tests.
The CSIC didn’t disclose the type of the submarine using the permanent magnet motor or the performance of the permanent magnet propulsion motor in the news.
However, a Chinese military expert said that the first permanent magnet propulsion motor was supposed to be installed on China’s homegrown conventional submarines, even though China has nuclear submarines and Russia-made Type 636 submarines at the naval base in Sanya.
The expert said that the motor used in conventional submarines has the power of several megawatts, but he still cannot determine the exact power of the installed test model.
Permanent magnet propulsion motor technology can replace the reduction gears and significantly reduce the running sound to the lowest possible level, the expert said.
On the global scale, the permanent magnet motor will have the power to meet the needs of full electrical movement for nuclear submarines.
China’s development of permanent magnet motor started in the 1990s. The news released by the CSIC means that China has made a great breakthrough in that field, the expert added.
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Hope the RAN's new Barracuda Class !a is fitted with this system?
:jump