A current submarine can only go as fast as 83 km/h, however the Harbin Institute of Technology says that they want to raise that by two orders of magnitude, making it even faster than jet planes. They state that this supersonic submarine can go from Shanghai to San Francisco in 100 minutes! The method they would use is called "Supercavitation". This occurs when small bubbles produced by the motion of a solid object join, creating one huge bubble that is longer than the solid object itself. This makes the solid be surrounded by gas, instead of water, which allows it to travel at speeds even greater. The mantis shrimp does this to hunt prey and we use it to enable propeller blades to go faster. The issue is to make an object get so fast that this can occur and maintain that speed. Harbin Researchers Say that they have developed a liquid membrane that when showered on the front of the submarine, would slash drag and enable it to get to the needed speed. There are still some technical issues they need to solve in order to achieve this but this research suggests that a 6000 km/h submarine may soon be on the market.
To read more: http://www.iflscience.com/technology/supersonic-submarine-could-travel-shanghai-san-francisco-100-minutes
No comments:
Post a Comment