Yamato 1

For other ships named Yamato, see Yamato (ship).

The Yamato 1 on display in Kobe, Japan

The front of the Yamato 1

The Yamato 1 is a boat built in the early 1990s by Japanese conglomerate "The Mitsubishi Group" through their subsidiary company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd at Wadasaki-cho Hyogo-ku, Kobe. It uses a magnetohydrodynamic drive (MHD) driven by a liquid helium-cooled superconductor and can travel at 15 km/h (8 knots).

The Yamato 1 was the first working prototype of its kind. It was completed in Japan in 1991, by the Ship & Ocean Foundation (later known as the Ocean Policy Research Foundation). The ship was first successfully propelled in Kobe harbour in June 1992. The Yamato 1 is propelled by two MHD thrusters that run without any moving parts.

MHD works by applying a magnetic field to an electrically conducting fluid. The electrically conducting fluid used in the MHD thruster of the Yamato 1 is seawater.

In the 1990s, Mitsubishi built several prototypes of ships propelled by an MHD system. These ships were only able to reach speeds of 15 km/h, despite higher projections.

Today the Yamato 1 is on display at the Kobe Maritime Museum.

A MHD thruster from the boat, at the Ship Science Museum in Tokyo.

Yamato 1 in front of the Kobe Maritime Museum.

References

• Operation of the Thruster for Superconducting Electromagnetohydrodynamic propulsion Ship "YAMATO 1"
• HTML Link of same article

Further reading

• Yohei Sasakawa: Yamato-1 - the world's first superconducting MHD propulsion ship. Ship & Ocean Foundation, Tokyo 1997, ISBN 4-916148-02-9

External links

• Magnetohydrodynamic and the Mitsubishi Yamato
• Popular Science November 1992 Superconductivity Goes To Sea
• Popular Mechanics August 1990 100 MPH Jet Ships
• Ship Sails on High-Tech, `Silent' Drive The Washington Post, June,17, 1992;
• Japanese Ship's Magnetic Attraction; Revolutionary Drive Design Lacks Moving Parts The Washington Post, June, 22, 1992