Chinese Engine Development

Blitzo

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
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gadgetcool5 said:
How much of these engines are actually made using machine tools native to China? Interestingly enough a Western think tank released a report five days ago with the following finding:

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How much do you think western think tanks and their track record on accurate PLA watching and Chinese military industry tracking would lend you to believe their statements are well informed?
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
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tphuang said:
The biggest deal to me is just seeing that they've frozen on the design and material already. That tells me the initial testing has been quite successful. This is a huge milestone. When WS-10 was first put into service, it really was rushed. As they started production after design certification, they were still including and updating the materials they were using. Because the original material they used in the design certification just simply wasn't meeting standards once they put it into use.

What we can see is that WS-10C already matches PLA expectations in performance and service life. So WS-15 likely will be already be relatively reliable by the time it is put into service with J-20.

And when it comes to next gen, it appears they are already far along in development. that's great to see. and by the time it goes into production, I would also expect it to be ready from design & material science point of view. That's something US/UK always had when they developed new engine and China never had until now.
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Orca man confirms that testing for WS-15 is progressing very smoothly.

Good news is that eventually they'll go for 2D TVC nozzles. Bad news is that initially there won't be any TVC at all...

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L

latenlazy

Brigadier
gadgetcool5 said:
How much of these engines are actually made using machine tools native to China? Interestingly enough a Western think tank released a report five days ago with the following finding:

View attachment 109878
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This isn’t like semis where not having this top of the line equipment category or that top of the line equipment category fundamentally disables your ability to make these components. The primary reason to go with a Japanese or European 5 axis machine over a domestic equivalent for example mostly comes down to service support and reliability. These are choices made for industrial efficiency not basic technical capabilities.

Oftentimes it helps to have some basic understanding of how these things work before freaking out about whether there are domestic substitutes. Like as we discovered with a lot of different semis equipment, a lot of times domestic equipment aren’t more prominent not because they don’t exist or can’t do the same production workflows but because they’re inferior on operational business factors rather than technical factors, and the former are not prohibitive to production ability, just business economics.
 
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gelgoog

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With regards to China using Japanese CNC machines to make engines, I think this is more for legacy reasons than something else. A decade ago Chinese CNC machines were not good enough. Right now they probably are good enough, but you do not just trash machines you already have in production for no reason, so this is basically institutional inertia.
 
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