IMO, is this a reason for 2 pages of the thread going off-topic, and even mods participating on it? This is the thread for chinese aircraft engines. Come on, we all know that the chinese are less advanced (perhabs much less) than the russians in aircraft engine technology, for obvious reasons. Russia has decades of advance compared to china. There is no reason to bash on this issue.
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
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IMO, is this a reason for 2 pages of the thread going off-topic, and even mods participating on it? This is the thread for chinese aircraft engines. Come on, we all know that the chinese are less advanced (perhabs much less) than the russians in aircraft engine technology, for obvious reasons. Russia has decades of advance compared to china. There is no reason to bash on this issue.
While China is almost definitely behind Russia in design abilities any quick perusal of the papers they’re publishing suggest pretty strongly they’re not *that* behind. It’s not like China needs to completely reinvent the wheel before they’re caught up.
Moderators were not participating as moderators but as normal members.
Blue or red text is used when moderator language/authority is being used.
And yes, the content and tone of that article prompting a thorough discussion is not abnormal given Chinese engine development is a closely watched and followed domain.
Dissecting out the nuances of it where it's wrong and where it's right is absolutely expected, and is one reason I would never have posted it here lol.
Funding is certainly modest compared to the US or China, but the UK and France are a different matter. Russia is indeed weak in commercial turbofans, mostly because the Soviet Union collapsed just as it was closing the gap with the West in this particular engine sector. As a result, projects to build modern high-BPR widebody counterparts to the GE90 and RR Trent like the NK-44 and innovative UHB architectures like the D-27 and NK-93 for civilian airliners never achieved production (though both of the latter flew). Nonetheless, the D-18T and PS-90A were technology-wise creditable competitors to the contemporary PW2000 and RR RB.211 family.
Since the late 2000s Russia is clawing back that lost ground though - the SaM146 exposed them to Western design an production practices as well as experience with international MRO requirements. The latter part was pretty painful, but contrary to superficial perceptions, the blame for some of the related issues actually falls squarely at Safran's feet and in any case it was a valuable lesson. More importantly, the entirely Russian PD-14 is coming along well, having wrapped up flight testing and achieved Russian certification in 2018, and approaches PW1100G and LEAP-1 level of technology*.
There's still a decent chance we'll see it fly on its intended application (the MS-21) before the year is out, it has already been installed on the aircraft and started up on the ground. How long before a C919 flies powered by two CJ-1000As? The PD-14 was at the stage where that engine is now more than 5 years ago! Next up will be the PD-35 for the CR929, where component testing is now underway - it should end up comparable to the GENx with composite fan blades (recently tested), composite fan casing, laminar flow nacelle and CMCs in the HPT.
* 3D blade aerodynamics, advanced single-crystal HPT turbine alloys with 1850K operating temp, hollow TiAL-alloy LPT, 3D printed fuel injectors, ceramic-tiled low-emission combustor, HPC with *higher* stage-PR than GTF/LEAP, LEAP-style O-duct thrust reverser with electro-mechanical actuation, nacelle with 60% composite construction including thrust reverser cascades... do you want me to go on? It's perhaps easier to put it this way: compared to the LEAP-1 it lacks only composite fan blades (have been recently tested in preparation for the PD-35 though), a composite fan casing and CMCs in stationary HPT components.
Not as big as the blow to Ukraine of losing Russia thoughAs much as 60% of engines designed/built by Progress/Motor-Sich is contributed by Russia (the entire low-pressure system on the D-18T, for example). The impact largely depends on how the supply chain of the individual companies and sometimes individual engine you are looking at developed in the Soviet era - it's not as though certain competencies were only available in Ukraine. For example, Klimov lost the vast majority of its production and MRO capacity for TV3-117 turboshafts (for which it is the design authority), but the RD-33 is virtually unaffected.
As compared to what - the WS-15? Due to secrecy, the information is scattered around various obscure sources, but it is credible (leaked photos, leaked company presentations, press releases by the developing company's competitors, an interview with a designer). If you put it all together and extrapolate a bit from the "white-world" progress achieved on the civilian PD-14, it is possible to form a pretty detailed picture - more detailed in some regards than publicly available info on the 20 year old F119! And the picture you get is that it's very advanced - at least half a generation beyond the likes of the F119 and EJ200 (possibly more, if the designer's hints at a VCE architecture come true - still on the fence there).
So we know within fairly close bounds some important Izd.30 specs, have seen photos of various parts and it is confirmed to have been in flight testing since late 2017. By contrast, the WS-15 is a nebulous mass of rumours that may or may not be accurate - and even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it doesn't match what we know fairly certainly on Izd.30.
Hollow single crystal turbine blades for cooling air are an old hat. Maybe not for China, but Russia applied that to later batches of the vanilla AL-31F (which probably accounts for at least some of the durability enhancements) and PS-90A. Or perhaps you refer to hollow TiAL-compound LPT blades (for weight saving)? Well, the PD-14 has those, while the CJ-1000A does not - despite the fact that RR manufactures such blades for its engines in China. Perhaps an indication that building to print according to a process installed by a foreign company is not the same thing as having mastered the technology yourself.
A rationalization technology for saving production cost, not an enabler. Alternative processes (which are much slower though) have been available for years, and the Russians like lasers in manufacturing, so I wouldn't exclude the possibility that they have something similar available.
Well, how do you account for the ability of RR to keep up with the US manufacturers?
The answer is that they developed most of it themselves. Throughout the Cold War they were operating in even greater isolation than today, resulting in an aerospace industry that is probably the most self-sufficient outside the US. For example, powder metallurgy turbomachinery discs are actually a Soviet/Russian invention and nobody else seriously attempted to build large titanium submarines (though the UK considered it for the W-class).
Slap similar sanctions on Western Europe or China and the disruption would be far greater. Look how quickly Russia has been able to compensate for the cut-off in CFRP raw material supply for the novel MS-21 wing - a sample made from the domestic replacement materials passed static testing recently. This decision to sanction Irkut may well backfire incidentally, because it makes this efficient process available for Russian military projects with far fewer strings attached. I doubt they would have dared to use it for PAK-DA previously, but now it's a distinct possibility.
All in all, the post-Soviet gap is not as big in military engines as you might think. At the time, projects to develop M88/F414/EJ200/F119 class engines were well advanced, to the point that the AL-41F (not the current one, known as Izd.117/117S, but the Izd.20 VCE) even flew. It didn't enter production, but produced some advances in the state of the art in Russia nonetheless - as latenlazy says, design capabilities suffered hardly any set-back at all. Production merely skipped one generation (M88/F414/EJ200/F119) but continued evolution of the AL-31F series limits the damage.
You could probably tell from my post you responded to here that I am not very familiar with the latest or the technology when it comes to engines. The hollow crystal blade advancement announced a few years ago made it sound like the only country that mastered it was the US and by association, UK industries because it is heavily implied that western powers often cooperate/trade at least academically when it comes to core technologies like this. I wasn't aware Russia already employed hollow crystal blades. It's still rather exclusive if it's only been done by American, Russian, British, and Chinese engineers. Anyway I did express blatant uncertainty about those points so please don't assume they were some sort of proud boast.
On the lasers, you're right, they are an economic measure. All of this was an attempt to suggest China isn't simply going to always lag by the same gap and the investment paid into this field in recent decades do yield progress. None of my post was to make it some competition against Russia although if I'm asked this, I'd still wager China's engine industry would be much more impressive give another few decades simply because of the gap in funding. Now to that question, sure it's not 1990s or 2000s Russia anymore and I'm honestly very glad that Russia's going to pick itself up and go from strength to strength particularly in these fields. That's something I'd like to see. Cooperation and competition between Russia and China is going to do both more good than harm. Particularly if one or the other develop certain things worth buying. Anyway the available resources allocated to the same Russian teams probably isn't comparable to American and European equivalents and probably not Chinese ones either. No matter the talent and residual industrial base, that fact is going to slow Russia's down. Of course this could change as Russia's economy improves and I'm not doubting those people could make miracles out of whatever resources they have. But if all things equal, I think the trends will become clear in the future. Anyway that's personal speculation and I could be so ridiculously wrong...happily wrong.
RR keeps up but could we compare RR's profits and available resources with those of Russia's engine design bureaus and manufacturers? I'd imagine RR makes a mint from supplying so much of Boeing and Airbus. They can keep up with GE and PW in high bypass commercials because they probably make almost as much.
For TiAL hollow blades, I'm not familiar with the difference to what I described as hollow single crystal blades. CJ-1000 details are probably sketchy as well and what finalised production versions will actually be equipped with may be a surprise? Anyway I don't know the details between those technologies and assumed Chinese engine manufacturers probably would be using the latest they're capable of within consideration for reliability. I heard a while back a Chinese team developed some technology for RR which was previously considered impossible (allegedly by a German team) and is supplying RR with this. Perhaps you or someone else know the details and can share your insights.
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Funding is certainly modest compared to the US or China, but the UK and France are a different matter. Russia is indeed weak in commercial turbofans, mostly because the Soviet Union collapsed just as it was closing the gap with the West in this particular engine sector. As a result, projects to build modern high-BPR widebody counterparts to the GE90 and RR Trent like the NK-44 and innovative UHB architectures like the D-27 and NK-93 for civilian airliners never achieved production (though both of the latter flew). Nonetheless, the D-18T and PS-90A were technology-wise creditable competitors to the contemporary PW2000 and RR RB.211 family.
Since the late 2000s Russia is clawing back that lost ground though - the SaM146 exposed them to Western design an production practices as well as experience with international MRO requirements. The latter part was pretty painful, but contrary to superficial perceptions, the blame for some of the related issues actually falls squarely at Safran's feet and in any case it was a valuable lesson. More importantly, the entirely Russian PD-14 is coming along well, having wrapped up flight testing and achieved Russian certification in 2018, and approaches PW1100G and LEAP-1 level of technology*.
There's still a decent chance we'll see it fly on its intended application (the MS-21) before the year is out, it has already been installed on the aircraft and started up on the ground. How long before a C919 flies powered by two CJ-1000As? The PD-14 was at the stage where that engine is now more than 5 years ago! Next up will be the PD-35 for the CR929, where component testing is now underway - it should end up comparable to the GENx with composite fan blades (recently tested), composite fan casing, laminar flow nacelle and CMCs in the HPT.
* 3D blade aerodynamics, advanced single-crystal HPT turbine alloys with 1850K operating temp, hollow TiAL-alloy LPT, 3D printed fuel injectors, ceramic-tiled low-emission combustor, HPC with *higher* stage-PR than GTF/LEAP, LEAP-style O-duct thrust reverser with electro-mechanical actuation, nacelle with 60% composite construction including thrust reverser cascades... do you want me to go on? It's perhaps easier to put it this way: compared to the LEAP-1 it lacks only composite fan blades (have been recently tested in preparation for the PD-35 though), a composite fan casing and CMCs in stationary HPT components.
Not as big as the blow to Ukraine of losing Russia though
As compared to what - the WS-15? Due to secrecy, the information is scattered around various obscure sources, but it is credible (leaked photos, leaked company presentations, press releases by the developing company's competitors, an interview with a designer). If you put it all together and extrapolate a bit from the "white-world" progress achieved on the civilian PD-14, it is possible to form a pretty detailed picture - more detailed in some regards than publicly available info on the 20 year old F119! And the picture you get is that it's very advanced - at least half a generation beyond the likes of the F119 and EJ200 (possibly more, if the designer's hints at a VCE architecture come true - still on the fence there).
So we know within fairly close bounds some important Izd.30 specs, have seen photos of various parts and it is confirmed to have been in flight testing since late 2017. By contrast, the WS-15 is a nebulous mass of rumours that may or may not be accurate - and even if you give them the benefit of the doubt it doesn't match what we know fairly certainly on Izd.30.
Hollow single crystal turbine blades for cooling air are an old hat. Maybe not for China, but Russia applied that to later batches of the vanilla AL-31F (which probably accounts for at least some of the durability enhancements) and PS-90A. Or perhaps you refer to hollow TiAL-compound LPT blades (for weight saving)? Well, the PD-14 has those, while the CJ-1000A does not - despite the fact that RR manufactures such blades for its engines in China. Perhaps an indication that building to print according to a process installed by a foreign company is not the same thing as having mastered the technology yourself.
A rationalization technology for saving production cost, not an enabler. Alternative processes (which are much slower though) have been available for years, and the Russians like lasers in manufacturing, so I wouldn't exclude the possibility that they have something similar available.
Well, how do you account for the ability of RR to keep up with the US manufacturers?
The answer is that they developed most of it themselves. Throughout the Cold War they were operating in even greater isolation than today, resulting in an aerospace industry that is probably the most self-sufficient outside the US. For example, powder metallurgy turbomachinery discs are actually a Soviet/Russian invention and nobody else seriously attempted to build large titanium submarines (though the UK considered it for the W-class).
Slap similar sanctions on Western Europe or China and the disruption would be far greater. Look how quickly Russia has been able to compensate for the cut-off in CFRP raw material supply for the novel MS-21 wing - a sample made from the domestic replacement materials passed static testing recently. This decision to sanction Irkut may well backfire incidentally, because it makes this efficient process available for Russian military projects with far fewer strings attached. I doubt they would have dared to use it for PAK-DA previously, but now it's a distinct possibility.
All in all, the post-Soviet gap is not as big in military engines as you might think. At the time, projects to develop M88/F414/EJ200/F119 class engines were well advanced, to the point that the AL-41F (not the current one, known as Izd.117/117S, but the Izd.20 VCE) even flew. It didn't enter production, but produced some advances in the state of the art in Russia nonetheless - as latenlazy says, design capabilities suffered hardly any set-back at all. Production merely skipped one generation (M88/F414/EJ200/F119) but continued evolution of the AL-31F series limits the damage.
(word limit to previous reply)
Russian gap in military engines is about as wide as the gap between Izd.30 and F135 timeline. The reason I said we don't know enough concrete info on the Izd.30 and shouldn't conclude on its amazing prowess (VCE hints etc) or whether it's going to be as meh as the WS-15 probably will be (ignoring the high thrust and being a "5th gen" engine). So the gap in military engines is fairly wide. Obviously this applies to China as well but that goes without saying (again I'm not pitching China against Russia). The fact is the Americans managed to field the F-135 and have done so for a long while already. F119 is still something neither Russia/China have managed to introduce an equivalent to. I don't know if 117/117S/Al-41 (sorry not knowledgeable enough on these topics) are truly F119 equivalents except maybe in approaching its dry/wet thrust and maybe power:weight. The latest upgraded WS-10x and Al-31x certainly are not.
There isn't anything particularly wrong with the past two threads. Atleast, I learned some new things regarding Chinese Engines and its relative strengths and weaknesses to Russian ones.
The engine thread almost always lies dormant. The topic of the thread is such that very few good things of quality is available for posting.
I'd like to have the brochure for China Aircraft Propulsion Technology Summit of 2019. Galleon was the organizer. It was held in Xi'an.
The brochure for 2012 had pretty good information regarding most Turbofan engine, it's Manufacturing institute as well as Thrust rating. The Wiki information of ws-15 thrust of 180 kN cam from that article.
The engine thread almost always lies dormant. The topic of the thread is such that very few good things of quality is available for posting.
I'd like to have the brochure for China Aircraft Propulsion Technology Summit of 2019. Galleon was the organizer. It was held in Xi'an.
The brochure for 2012 had pretty good information regarding most Turbofan engine, it's Manufacturing institute as well as Thrust rating. The Wiki information of ws-15 thrust of 180 kN cam from that article.
Where would you say then Chinese military engines are at in a comparable time in US history? 1980s? And when WS-15 comes on 2000s?
Such announcements always do. If something is touted as a first or includes a short list of countries to indicate how exclusive the capability is, immediately suspect hyperbole and research the claim. Always good policy, no matter where it originates from. In my experience, chances are better than even that it's a misrepresentation, based on outdated information or a blatant lie
France has this capability as well, developed at significant expense for the M88 after the US made quite sure its use on the CFM56 did NOT result in tech transfer. Japan too - it's scarcely credible that it would be possible to build engines like the XF5, XF9 and F7-10 without.
TiAL is a lighter, more durable material for low-pressure turbines that is commonly used to make hollow blades (not for cooling, but for weight saving in this case). It's not a single crystal material and unsuitable for the hot environment of high-pressure turbines.
The info material released when the CJ-1000 demonstrator engine was presented a few years ago made a point of mentioning it didn't have this technology. Though I guess it left open the possibility that it could change in the production version, yes.
The Izd.117/117S are basically the latest evolved AL-31F iterations, so no - they are definitely not full F119 equivalents (though like late-model F100s and F110s, they do adopt some 5th gen technologies). Unlike China though, Izd.30 is actually the second attempt at a 5th generation engine for Russia, and while it did not enter production, the first (Izd.20 in the 1990s) did go as far as flight testing.
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This is not a straightforward question to answer, because Chinese military engine development does not appear to exactly parallel US chronology. By the time their equivalents to the most recent WS-10 models entered service, the F119 was already much further along than the WS-15 appears to be now. Technology prototyped on the YF119 and YF120 demonstrators went into production as a clean-sheet design and in upgrades to earlier engines within a much shorter space of time. Hence the J-20 (F-22 counterpart) entering service with previous-generation engines.
So, very roughly speaking, currently somewhere in the mid- to late-1990s perhaps, and mid- to late-2000s once the WS-15 comes online? Assuming the WS-15 broadly matches the level of technology in the F119.
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Think it’s useful here to look at the progress with their component technologies rather than with their current outstanding projects. If you search for the right terms you can find a lot of work being done on 4th generation single crystal alloys, CMCs parts for gas turbines, carbon fiber fan blades, variable cycle engines, engine designs with a 15 T:W ratio, etc. That we also saw what was presumably a picture of a development prototype for a 15 T:W ratio engine a few months ago gives another clue for how mature this research is and where the industry is at with integration of these different component technologies. My guess is that by the time China comes out with such an engine they’ll probably be about a decade behind the leading edge in terms of what’s in production, but maybe caught up in terms of their basic capabilities.