While reading about airplane engines on the internet, it is common to find figures of their thrust, in kilo Newton. However, in the case of ships and naval vessels, when talking about the engine, the only parameter mentioned is the horsepower of the power plant driving the propeller.
So, my question is, what is the typical thrust generated by a large naval ship (such as the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, with a power of 210 MW)? How can this be calculated?
This gives a complete analysis of how to calculate : http://web.mit.edu/13.012/www/handouts/propellers_reading.pdf
If you know the Froude efficiency $\eta_{\text{Fr}}$ and assume a constant velocity $u$ for the ship. Then you can calculate the thrust $F_{\text{T}}$ for given power at the shaft $P_{\text{S}}$ as $$F_{\text{T}}=\eta_{\text{Fr}}\frac{P_{\text{S}}}{u}.$$
There is also a dimensionless thrust coefficient $C_{\text{T}}$ which is defined as:
$$C_{\text{T}}=\frac{F_{\text{T}}}{1/2\rho v^2 (D/2)^2}.$$
In which $\rho$ is the density of the fluid (here: water) and $D$ is the diameter of the screw. $v = u(1-w)$ in which $w$ is the so-called wake fraction.
A nuclear ship doesn't generate thrust, it generates power. The Propeller generate thrust. Jet engines generate thrust because the engine is it's own propeller.
A nuclear powered ship generates power typically in form of steam and drives a turbine which is mechanically converted into a drivetrain to run the propeller. All of this is mechanical from steam turbine linked to a transmission and drivetrain. Thou French use a turbo-electric system of reactor power electricity running a motor.
This linkage Achieves a typical efficiency of 18-22 percent from initial reactor power to final shaft horsepower. The NS Savannah had a 74 Megawatt (99,200 hp) reactor and converted to a single screw to make 22-24 thousand horsepower so a conversion efficiency of 22% average
The Nimitz class carrier had x2 550 Megawatt (1.475 Million Hp) Westinghouse A4W reactors and screw final output of 260,000 shaft horsepower; 17% efficient. But remember some of that steam also supplied generator power electric demand and lot of that steam is also siphoned to provide the catapault steam system to launch planes.
