from Hacker News

Cycloidal marine propellers: Efficient thrust in any direction

by Zobat on 4/15/24, 3:38 PM with 45 comments

• by perlgeek on 4/15/24, 8:03 PM

  I really hope this works out.

  The cynic in me immediately says "so many moving parts, maintenance will be quite a problem", but I don't really have the expertise to make that a argument against the success of this concept.

• by geor9e on 4/15/24, 10:29 PM

  I'm so confused how this works, but based on this animation I found, it seems like it just shoves the water sideways in the direction of thrust, then turns so it's cutting though the water in the opposite direction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub563Yc3xls

• by ChrisMarshallNY on 4/15/24, 8:38 PM

  Looks like a Ginsu Propeller™. Slices, dices, etc...

  In all seriousness, it would be great if it worked out, but we are constantly seeing marine tech being messed up by the marine environment.

  There's a reason that every damn thing that has "Marine" in its title, costs ten times as much.

  It really, really sucks to be stuck out in the middle of the ocean, because your shaft rusted.

• by ilove_banh_mi on 4/15/24, 7:19 PM

  In case you wonder how landlocked Switzerland would be so involved in such marine work, ABB is a Swedish-Swiss corporation and the pictures were clearly taken in the Baltic Sea (in the Gulf of Bothnia or Gulf of Finland).

• by sp332 on 4/15/24, 6:37 PM

  > 85% efficiency

  Hm, is that a lot?

  > independent testing of a passenger vessel fitted with different propulsion systems found that the ABB Dynafin solution managed energy savings of 22% compared to conventional shaftline configurations.

  Oh. That's a lot!

• by lawlessone on 4/15/24, 5:16 PM

  looks like bundles of kitchen knives.

• by ermir on 4/15/24, 6:11 PM

  So this is like a helicopter propeller system, but the individual blades point upwards.

• by hasoleju on 4/15/24, 6:27 PM

  During the last centuries there was a technological shift in cargo ship drives roughly every 100 years. From sailing to steam boat over combustion engines to these drives?

• by kayodelycaon on 4/15/24, 4:24 PM

  This isn't exactly a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voith_Schneider_Propeller

  Tugboats use them.

• by gravescale on 4/15/24, 5:54 PM

  > Each blade is individually controlled by an electric motor, a frequency converter (to control torque and rpm) and control logic"

  I know it's far from the only, or even most critical, embedded system on a ship, but being stuck at sea because your propellor CPU crashed, bricked during an OTA update or got taken over by a crypto miner does feel like it lies squarely on the current trajectory of reality.