Rolls-Royce's "beast of the seas"

The ’beast of the seas’, as Rolls-Royce describes it, greeted the world from the company’s stand at the recent London defence exhibition DSEi. The MT30 marine turbine — the most powerful marine turbine in the world — is, like many celebrities, smaller in real life. Even its product director describes it as ’dumpy’.

But the unprepossessing steel cylinder is at the heart of some of the most glamorous vessels in the world’s navies. It’s the powerhouse of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth (QE)-class aircraft carriers, which will each house two of the turbines to generate electricity for propulsion and on-board systems. And across the Atlantic it provides the power for the US’s latest destroyers, the DDG1000 class, and its littoral combat ships (LCSs). Each LCS will, like the QE carriers, carry two turbines but these each power two Rolls-Royce waterjets, propelling the 3,500-ton vessels at speeds in excess of 40 knots.

’It’s dumpy because it’s a twin-spool design, with IP [intermediate-pressure] and HP [high-pressure] compressors running off separate shafts,’ explained product director Alan Millichamp. ’It’s shorter than our competitor’s engine, which only has one compression system and a much longer shaft with more compression stages.’