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That's largely a result of them being designed as electrical power generators. Turbine power generators are usually for peak loads, over and above whatever your coal, nuclear, or hydro power plants can generate, so they're always going to be running hard, and can fairly easily be scaled in multimegawatt chunks by starting up another turbine if needed. So they're always optimized for high power settings.It's possible to design a turbine to be most effective at some other rpm, like how military turbofans and turbojets are designed to be most efficient at some lower power and get rather inefficient at MIL thrust due to overspeeding the compressor blades to over Mach 1.3(!) Civilian turbofans don't overspeed their compressors anywhere near as much, I don't believe they deliberately exceed mach 1 tip speeds and usually keep to about Mach 0.9, but even they are usually set to have best economy at "flight idle" and are much thirstier at takeoff power.While I do love the rumble of a big Fairbanks-Morse 38D diesel, they're about the worst engine possible for a ship, especially a submarine.
That's largely a result of them being designed as electrical power generators. Turbine power generators are usually for peak loads, over and above whatever your coal, nuclear, or hydro power plants can generate, so they're always going to be running hard, and can fairly easily be scaled in multimegawatt chunks by starting up another turbine if needed. So they're always optimized for high power settings.
It's possible to design a turbine to be most effective at some other rpm, like how military turbofans and turbojets are designed to be most efficient at some lower power and get rather inefficient at MIL thrust due to overspeeding the compressor blades to over Mach 1.3(!) Civilian turbofans don't overspeed their compressors anywhere near as much, I don't believe they deliberately exceed mach 1 tip speeds and usually keep to about Mach 0.9, but even they are usually set to have best economy at "flight idle" and are much thirstier at takeoff power.
While I do love the rumble of a big Fairbanks-Morse 38D diesel, they're about the worst engine possible for a ship, especially a submarine.
