The picture was posted by AECC Xi'an Aero-Engine Ltd., which is not the manufacturer of CJ-1000 (i.e., Commercial Aircraft Engine Corporation in Shanghai).
China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft
- Thread starter Totoro
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ACAE is a subsidiary of AECC.
Both are, but Xi'an Aero-Engine Ltd. that posted the picture is in charge of WS-20, not CJ-1000.
Based on that GT article? TBH, the author of that article seems to know as much as we do.
You must know more than i do, but AFAIK until i see pictures, thats just speculation at this point. Lets wait.
That's the same old image of 20001 as it flew on its maiden flight! Exactly the same, just cut out.
Yes, the original poster used the old image of 20001 prototype to imply that:
1. Y-20B was in yellow primer at her maiden flight.
2. It is a new prototype, just like 20001 to Y-20A.
3. The number is 20X01 (probably, 20101).
Accordingly, my speculation is that:
In addition to new engines, Y-20B is longer than Y-20A, making it necessary to build a new prototype.
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Why does y-20 need to be longer? it needs new engines, not a longer fuselage.
WS-20 is lighter but more powerful than WS-18. The redesign of the airframe requires a new prototype for testing.
There's also a precedent for having a longer fuselage to increase the volume of the cargo bay (length, specifically), where the extra space can be exploited by having more powerful engines.
The Il-76MF adopted this modification by lengthening the fuselage 6.6 meters. Compared to the baseline MD variant it was powered by the more powerful PS90.
In the case of Y-20, it could be plausible that they are interested in a similar modification.
I'm not sure if the recently flown Y-20B will have a lengthened fuselage, but we know at Zhuhai 2016 they showed a civil cargo variant of Y-20 called Y-20F-100, which was powered by a high bypass engine that many took to interpret as WS-20 as well as a greater length (in the promotional video at 54m long, up to 7 meters longer than the normal Y-20A).
So there's definitely a rationale for why a stretched Y-20 variant powered by WS-20 could make sense. Whether the recently flown Y-20B has those fuselage plugin is a different matter though
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