I’ve always wondered: Why can’t ships go faster? Is it simply friction and surface tension? I guess so. Those cigarette racers go fast as blazes and scarcely touch the surface as they reach top speed. How fast can a submarine go? Has anyone successfully used cavitation on ocean-going vessels?
We could tell you, but we really would have to kill you...
No. It's wavemaking - of surface waves. The reason that cigarret racers can go fast is that they plane on the surface of the water thus putting much less energy into wavemaking.
Because submerged submarines are submerged they don't make surface waves and so they can go faster for the same horsepower. On the surface most subs are limited to speeds less than 15 knots because of surface wave making again. The shape is horrible for that purpose
If you were told, you wouldn't believe it.
Hull speed is dependent on the amount of water it displaces and how fast a wave can move through that much water.
Displacement vessels (ships, sailboats) are limited in speed by the length of their water line. Planing vessels (speed boats, catamarans) are not.
The speed of a displacement ship such as this destroyer is limited by it’s speed length ratio (SLR). The hull design engineers create a hull form to mimic a longer hull.
If sufficient power is applied to make a vessel rise on plane then the S/L ration does not limit the speed.
A high powered tug with power way beyond it’s S/L ratio will not go up on a plane because of it’s hull design and may well actually go slower at full power due to the enormous waves created.
“how fast can a nuclear sub go”
Copy and google it.
Only 80 VLS tubes.
A new Burke DDG has at least 96, comes in at 10,000 tons and is proven.
The Zumwalt was intended as an R&D platform.
Look for learnings to be added to the planned Large Surface Combatant.
In the mean time we’ll keep building the Burke Flight IIIa. And a bunch are funded.
I believe that as they go faster, they begin to pitch down at the bow., increasing drag.
It depends on whether they are in hard water or soft water.
Assuming you mean supercavitation then it's been used on torpedoes and there have been tests done on larger underwater craft. Problem with it is that it's noisy. A submarine using supercavitation would be instantly detectable by any sonar system for hundreds of miles and the noise it generates would blind its own sonar.