PROGRESS IN TURBINE SHIP PROPULSION. 81 



Mr. R. S.-^nford Riley, Mct)iber: — Our president has called on me, no doubt, because of 

 my position in cliarge of what may be called the "Trouble Department" of the Emergency 

 Fleet Corporation. I might say that business is good in that line. (Applause.) 



I appreciated very much the way Mr. Emmet spoke of the need of our study of the 

 causes of troubles — that is what we are applying ourselves to, for with any new art you 

 must expect a great many troubles — the art would not be worth anything if you did not en- 

 counter difficulties. You would not have an art of gearing unless you had something to 

 overcome in its development. 



We find that a great deal of our trouble lies in the lack of knowledge of those who are 

 operating the machinery, particularly in regard to lubrication. The man who has been trained 

 to lubricate an engine running up to 80 revolutions a minute has had a very poor training for 

 lubricating something that runs up to between 3,000 and 4,000 revolutions a minute. It is 

 a different matter; he has no warning whatever. Instead of the gradual heating up of a 

 bearing, which he can test and feel with his finger and look at the kind of oil that is coming 

 away, he is in the case of the turbine and gears dealing with something which will give 

 scarcely any warning and which goes up in a flash, with a possibility of much damage 

 resulting. 



We have devoted ourselves to the oiling systems, and we have tried to educate the men 

 who are operating the machinery to the need of an abundant supply of clean, cool oil. I 

 notice, by the way, in Mr. Hodgkinson's diagram of the oiling devices that he omitted to 

 mention one of the things we think is necessary — possibly he omitted it as being simply 

 incidental — and that is the drain from the water side of the oil cooler. You will realize 

 that, in the lubricating system such as is used in the reduction gearing, there is only one 

 place where the oil and water come in close contact, and that is in the oil cooler where you 

 have the oil separated from^ the water only by the cooler tubes and the heads. I suppose 

 there is no such thing as a permanently tight oil cooler or any other device of that kind. 

 In time they leak, due to the failure of the packing around the tubes, or possibly the failure 

 of the tubes, so we are advocating strongly the provision of a drain from the water side. 

 That serves two purposes. In the first place, in port it allows the draining away of the water 

 so that the corrosion due to the presence of salt water at relatively high temperature does 

 not cause trouble with the tubes, and it also gives an effective means of testing the appara- 

 tus to discover whether there is a leak of oil. 



One thing we insist on, under O'perating conditions, is that the pressure oi the oil — that 

 is, the head of the oil in the oil cooler — ^must be higher than the head of the water on the water 

 side. You will realize the need of that, of course. In case of a leak you have oil flowing 

 into water, and not water flowing into the oil; it is a bad thing to lose oil, but a much 

 worse thing to gain salt water. We have had cases of engineers, where the latter situation 

 has existed, who had their oil level come up for some mysterious reason, and presumably 

 they took it as a gift from the gods and allowed it to continue until something happened. 



There are other things in connection with turbine gears. We now and then run across 

 engineers who regard the collection of gears in this casing as the captain regards his chronom- 

 eter — ^something which must not be monkeyed with. We are trying to get the engineers to 

 take off the covers arid become familiar with what there is on the inside. 



I do not think of anything else of special interest applying to the paper, but I am glad 

 to have an opportunity to speak of the need of education of engineers who have charge of 

 these reduction gears. 



