Chengdu next gen combat aircraft (?J-36)

Nx4eu

Nx4eu

Junior Member
Registered Member
Tomboy said:
If we are going by emphasising all aspect stealth and IR signature management (Which I thought was one of the biggest selling point of 6th gen?) then yeah, if the US does go through with designs like those then it's likely going to be better. Even the original buried exhaust would very likely be better. Odd choice to trade off higher overall stealth for maneuverability especially in a plane that seemingly wasn't meant to be extremely maneuverable in the first place and with the usefulness of high maneuverability in future combat being very debated.
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If all aspect stealth was a priority and the US uses canards and the Chinese don’t, is the Chinese design inferior because it’s not the same as the US. Are the moving wingtips of the J-XDS inferior to American control solutions because the Americans aren’t using them? Is the J-XDS intake solution also inferior than American intakes? Why would the Chinese deviate? Maybe Chengdu and Shenyang engineers did their own research and made their own conclusions.
 
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ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
Tomboy said:
Or management decided they wanted to add unrealistic features and changes
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And do you even have any work interactions with the management of Chengdu AC, let alone the 甲方, i.e. PLAAF in any official capacity? Or are you part of the J-36's design and engineering team at Chengdu AC that has received such instructions from the management?

If not, then I'd suggest you to calm the hell down.
 
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plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
latenlazy said:
There’s a strong push for these newer projects to adopt rapid iteration and prototyping development paradigms. With the amount of data they can collect these days, the maturity of simulation tools, and more modular efficiency first and digitally assisted manufacturing design I don’t think rapid turnaround time on revisions is a big stretch. It’s been almost a year since first flight after all.
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ACuriousPLAFan said:
So how long does it take to fabricate a prototype, then? Especially when considering that this isn't a "start-from-zero/start-from-scratch" prototype.
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For small tweaks, sure, but I’m just struggling to see how they can make a significant design revision like changing intake designs so quickly.

To be frank, the only reason I can think off where such a fundamental design revision would be rolled out so quickly based on flight test data is if there are serious and massive issues with the original intake design.

What is far more reasonable in my view, is that triple DSI was always the end goal, but they were not confident doing that from the get go with a tailless TVC design; or they couldn’t decide between the two designs and so opted to do a mini fly off to settle the matter.

I have no doubt that they would have incorporated small tweaks as a result of flight test data, but the amount of work needed to redesign the intakes just seems implausible to be able to be done in less than a year. It would be far less than a year if you factor in a few months to gather and analyse the flight test data, and also the many months needed to actually build the second prototype.

The timeline just doesn’t fit as it would be far too aggressive.
 
Tomboy

Tomboy

Senior Member
Registered Member
Nx4eu said:
If all aspect stealth was a priority and the US uses canards and the Chinese don’t, is the Chinese design inferior because it’s not the same as the US. Are the moving wingtips of the J-XDS inferior to American control solutions because the Americans aren’t using them? Is the J-XDS intake solution also inferior than American intakes? Why would the Chinese deviate? Maybe Chengdu and Shenyang engineers did their own research and made their own conclusions.
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I'm not sure what you are getting here? Trenched exhaust is known to offer superior IR signature and stealth, I'm not saying China must blindly copy the US to be good. It could also be simply because they could not solve technical problems with trenched exhaust system and have to resort to something less advanced.
 
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iewgnem

Captain
Registered Member
I don't know why we're talking about NGAD when we don't even know for certain if F-47 will be tailless. The only conversion that has any merit is comparing J-36 to J-XD.
 
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latenlazy

Brigadier
plawolf said:
For small tweaks, sure, but I’m just struggling to see how they can make a significant design revision like changing intake designs so quickly.

To be frank, the only reason I can think off where such a fundamental design revision would be rolled out so quickly based on flight test data is if there are serious and massive issues with the original intake design.

What is far more reasonable in my view, is that triple DSI was always the end goal, but they were not confident doing that from the get go with a tailless TVC design; or they couldn’t decide between the two designs and so opted to do a mini fly off to settle the matter.

I have no doubt that they would have incorporated small tweaks as a result of flight test data, but the amount of work needed to redesign the intakes just seems implausible to be able to be done in less than a year. It would be far less than a year if you factor in a few months to gather and analyse the flight test data, and also the many months needed to actually build the second prototype.

The timeline just doesn’t fit as it would be far too aggressive.
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It’s entirely possible that they already had a portfolio of alternative design choices in mind from earlier subscale prototyping work and more extensive flight testing from the first full scale prototype confirmed the alternate choices were better for their performance expectations and requirement, so revisions didn’t also require a full round of subsystem redesign validation.

siegecrossbow said:
What if the flexible membrane on the nozzle flaps don’t tolerate heat very well and the defect is detected during test flight? They go for off the shelf solution before a better one can be developed.
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This was my thought as well. If that’s the case I think the flexible nozzle flap could easily make a return in the future. Another possibility though (and I’m guessing blindly here) is undesirable aerodynamic side effects.

Tomboy said:
I'm not sure what you are getting here? Trenched exhaust is known to offer superior IR signature and stealth, I'm not saying China must blindly copy the US to be good. It could also be simply because they could not solve technical problems with trenched exhaust system and have to resort to something less advanced.
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There are multiple ways to do IR suppression. Without seeing the engineering details and test data it’s impossible to know if the benefits of going with one approach vs any other another is meaningful or not, or if you are giving up tradeoffs that are unnecessary given your other engineering requirements. If you’re genuinely interested in engineering questions you should try to think about how the engineering works beyond oversimplified internet slop.
 
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Tomboy

Tomboy

Senior Member
Registered Member
latenlazy said:
If you’re genuinely interested in engineering questions you should try to think about how the engineering works beyond oversimplified internet slop.
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At this point with all the chest thumping in this forum recently I'm just interested in how we actually stack up with the competition, are we truly that far ahead or are we just being overconfident. If you are so knowledgeable why don't you give us lesser folks some pointers on how exactly is this a improvement.
 
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