Which one are you referring to, WS-15 or XF9?
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Can you show that please.
XF-9. There is only one known image of WS-15 and that is of the core only.
Actually they are really not compareable. The XF9 is an research project without any particular fighter project, while the WS-15 is the target engine of J-20. The XF9 project at best would be a technology demonstrator, not an usable engine. There is still gap between a successful research project and an actual engine ready for service. On the other hand, the research stage of the WS-15 have been completed years ago, it might have already been tested on a J-20.
Damn that is one hell of a detailed article. You only see such details on hacker news. I am impressed.
So I don't want it to sound like WS-10C is not an impressive. What China has done in short term is extraordinary. They managed to increase thrust by 16% from 2009 to 2019, while also significant improving reliability and service life. They are able to produce enough WS-10 to power up to 100 J-20s/flankers a year + another 20 to 40 J-10s. That's really difficult to be able to mass produce WS-10 to this degree. The industrial gains here to be able to do this is invaluable.
I remember when they first started to fly, the failure rate on WS-10 was out of this world. They had so many little issues they had to work through. You do expect your first real modern engine to have this level of problems, but it was definitely a painful process. Over time, they worked through the problems until they finally got an engine with higher thrust, lower fuel consumption and more reliability than the Russian engines they were replacing. Quite amazing stuff. Huge progress in these 10 years. While I expected WS-15 to be ready sooner (like around 2023) when J-20 first came out, I think it's actually more important that they are able to mass produce WS-10 at such a high level and reliability. When WS-15 is ready to be mass produced, I don't think we will have the same long maturation process we had with WS-10.
I also think WS-15 will probably come out with more power than I originally expected. I was thinking in the 150 kN to 160 kN back 10 years ago. I think it will likely to be closer 170 kN by the time it comes out.
In China the materials are already developed. They’ve gone ahead with the component technology well in advance of the WS-15’s development cycle. That’s how they can already start work on their next generation engine. And in fact we’ve already seen some hints that they’ve started work on an iterative improvement to the WS-15.
I think based on the last five or so years of probing the academic publication space the lead time between when research on new materials gets published and when it’s actually developed is maybe 2-3 years. We’re starting to see some stuff on 5th gen single crystals in Chinese academic literature so my guess is they already have 5th gen single crystal materials in testing.
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