J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII

[taxiya]

I have doubts about 3D printing macroscopic single-crystal structures. A single crystal within a single droplet formed by a single laser pulse is far from sufficient.

Laser printing alone is never the whole solution, there is always something as "heat treatment" that will remove the inherent imperfections of 3D printing.

Example of load-bearing TA15 structure, the crack propagation rate of 3D printed part is lower (better) than forged one. This is result in 2009.


[addition]
Besides directly printing the turbine blisk, another approach is to print the mold and cast. This also greatly improve the quality of the mold and speed of making the mold, therefor reduce time of production. A 2021 paper says that AVIC Limin engine and Xi'an Jiaotong used this approach in producing turbine blisk.

 

[aubzman]

I hadn't realised this but it turns out the J-20A/S, for some reason, stopped serrating the trailing edge of the canards?
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Do the new engines require more intake air given their higher thrust because these photos look like that intakes have not changed much, if at all?

 

[taxiya]

Do the new engines require more intake air given their higher thrust because these photos look like that intakes have not changed much, if at all?

No. Thrust is determined by number of gas molecules and their exit speed. Increasing molecule's exit speed increases thrust generated by single molecule, meaning less molecule is needed to exit simutanously to create same thrust, or same amount of air create higher thrust, thereby same intake.

Analog is a machine gun shooting constant number of bullets per second (incoming airflow), the destruction effect (thrust) increases if each bullet's muzzle velocity (exit speed) increases, but the rate of bullet fed to the gun reamins unchanged (intake).

 

[Tomboy]

More J-20A spotted outside of CAC park

 

[Alfa_Particle]

What an angle, whoa.

 

[Gloire_bb]

Btw, came to me, that the appearance of hardware spin-off versions of jets can be interpreted as a sign of going out of development hell.

We can't really know how troublesome J-20 is; there's no similar openness as with F-35 program（which is plagued by super troublesome development, but also rolls off production lines in hundreds). But the program could afford J-20S on top of J-20A, because, well, they could spare testing capacity for it, without creating competing versions.
Su-57 as another example - a platform emerging out of troubled development and catch-up.

F-35 program, as it appears, can't really afford to even think about any hardware derivatives beyond the original plan before the 2030s.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Btw, came to me, that the appearance of hardware spin-off versions of jets can be interpreted as a sign of going out of development hell.

We can't really know how troublesome J-20 is; there's no similar openness as with F-35 program（which is plagued by super troublesome development, but also rolls off production lines in hundreds). But the program could afford J-20S on top of J-20A, because, well, they could spare testing capacity for it, without creating competing versions.
Su-57 as another example - a platform emerging out of troubled development and catch-up.

F-35 program, as it appears, can't really afford to even think about any hardware derivatives beyond the original plan before the 2030s.

CAC prescribes to the Dassault method of fighter aircraft development. Instead of designing and producing an aircraft that meets all the design requirements from the get go, it designs a good solution that satisfies many but not all requirements, mass produce the aircraft to establish mature production lines, and iteratively improve the aircraft both externally and internally through radically different blocks. We see this with J-10 series and J-20 series and it is all but guaranteed that we will see it with the J-36 series. If Sukhoi were to produce the J-10, I think that it will use completely new designations for J-10A/B/C.

 

[Wrought]

CAC prescribes to the Dassault method of fighter aircraft development. Instead of designing and producing an aircraft that meets all the design requirements from the get go, it designs a good solution that satisfies many but not all requirements, mass produce the aircraft to establish mature production lines, and iteratively improve the aircraft both externally and internally through radically different blocks. We see this with J-10 series and J-20 series and it is all but guaranteed that we will see it with the J-36 series. If Sukhoi were to produce the J-10, I think that it will use completely new designations for J-10A/B/C.

Well to be fair, F-35A/B/C variants do have major differences between them. Albeit their development was more parallel than sequential.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Well to be fair, F-35A/B/C variants do have major differences between them. Albeit their development was more parallel than sequential.

Capability wise they are similar though, just with optimizations for different roles/flight parameters. You won’t see a leap from J-20 baseline to J-20A until F-35 Block 4 enters service.

 

[Deino]

What an angle, whoa.
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And now in clear form, in high resolution and one more showing a 61x2x serial number!