Chinese Aviation Industry

gelgoog said:

It takes a decade to develop new materials. A decade to develop a new jet engine from scratch. A decade to develop a new aircraft.
You cannot make an aircraft without the prior steps unless you buy your way out of it with imports. It just takes time it is as simple as that.

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This is Shaanxi province with the capital of Xian. one of the largest Aerospace/aviation base of China located here. include supply chain of commercial aircraft , military aviation. Y-20 produced here. WS-15 will be produce here in Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation. and H-20 is the project of Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation.

They have basically approved 100 Billion RMB worth largest aviation cluster in their province. means more finance to Engine/gas turbine. they are also in talks with COMAC for second assembly line of C919.

The emphasis seems to have been in military aircraft. The civilian transporters were originally regional airliners or close to it.
Only now is proper funding going into the civilian aircraft business.

But like I said it takes time. You have to see Russia for example. They were not that far behind the US in Soviet times in terms of aerospace. In some areas they were ahead even. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, they lost a decade or more in development of materials and aviation in general. Which is why the AL-41 and the MiG 1.44 were cancelled for example. But progress went further in some areas than others. For example a lot of people don't know but Russia continued to advance its semiconductor fabrication capabilities in the 1990s. They also imported modern Western software and design technology to aircraft and engine design.

So you get the current AL-41 engine. Which was based on Soviet materials, but designed with modern Western software methods, and the Su-35, which uses MIPS-64 compatible CPUs and way more modern avionics than anything in a Soviet plane. They basically went from the 8086 to the Pentium Pro.

Only with aircraft like the Su-57 are you seeing more modern aviation materials. And its AL-51 engine will have the new materials the Russians developed post Soviet era.

With regards to China it seemed to have deep lag in terms of aviation materials and jet engine design. Which is not something you can solve easily. Just remember how long it took for China to even absorb imported technology like the MiG-21 with its Tumansky engine or to design the JH-7 with the Rolls-Royce engine. Just setting up production of those engines in China took over a decade after the technology was imported. And that was not a new ground up design. But given the progress with military engines and military aircraft it is kind of obvious this will translate into the civilian sector eventually.

sunnymaxi said:

This is Shaanxi province with the capital of Xian. one of the largest Aerospace/aviation base of China located here. include supply chain of commercial aircraft , military aviation. Y-20 produced here. WS-15 will be produce here in Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation. and H-20 is the project of Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation.

They have basically approved 100 Billion RMB worth largest aviation cluster in their province. means more finance to Engine/gas turbine. they are also in talks with COMAC for second assembly line of C919.

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You have to first catch up in base block technology to be able to build something competitive. As I've discussed before, they only caught up to a sufficient level in base block technology back 5 to 10 years ago. So that's why C919 itself imo is still a little heavy for a new aircraft that just entered service. you normally would expect new commercial airliners to be noticeably more efficient than incumbent. Which really wasn't the case for C919 when A320NEO happened. So, it needs to upgrade again in the next 5 years.

When C929 get developed, it needs to probably have 10% advantage over B787 in CASM.

tphuang said:

You have to first catch up in base block technology to be able to build something competitive. As I've discussed before, they only caught up to a sufficient level in base block technology back 5 to 10 years ago. So that's why C919 itself imo is still a little heavy for a new aircraft that just entered service. you normally would expect new commercial airliners to be noticeably more efficient than incumbent. Which really wasn't the case for C919 when A320NEO happened. So, it needs to upgrade again in the next 5 years.

When C929 get developed, it needs to probably have 10% advantage over B787 in CASM.

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also recently we have seen huge funds pouring into COMAC to develop domestic supply chain and as you said basic tech has conquered. advancement in materials and production is going up and up. so no excuse for COMAC now. C919 is their flagship project so it must succeed. i m sure COMAC is working on improved version.

gelgoog said:

With regards to China it seemed to have deep lag in terms of aviation materials and jet engine design. Which is not something you can solve easily. Just remember how long it took for China to even absorb imported technology like the MiG-21 with its Tumansky engine or to design the JH-7 with the Rolls-Royce engine. Just setting up production of those engines in China took over a decade after the technology was imported. And that was not a new ground up design. But given the progress with military engines and military aircraft it is kind of obvious this will translate into the civilian sector eventually.

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Had*. Last two Zhuhai shows have shown that on the aerospace materials front they’ve become quite prolific. And it seems they’re aggressively introducing them into the commercial R&D process wherever they can, like with 3D printed parts and carbon fiber fan blades.

latenlazy said:

Had*. Last two Zhuhai shows have shown that on the aerospace materials front they’ve become quite prolific. And it seems they’re aggressively introducing them into the commercial R&D process wherever they can, like with 3D printed parts and carbon fiber fan blades.

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so yeah, I think we can agree that material science and production technology really got good maybe 5 years ago. That means, they need to make sure that first upgrade to C919 program is really solid. Like, it needs to have cost advantage vs A321NEO and A220-500 (which I'm sure will be launched).

tphuang said:

so yeah, I think we can agree that material science and production technology really got good maybe 5 years ago. That means, they need to make sure that first upgrade to C919 program is really solid. Like, it needs to have cost advantage vs A321NEO and A220-500 (which I'm sure will be launched).

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I mean, they’re working on their own carbon fiber wings for the C929 now that Russia’s out of the picture. And it seems wind up for that didn’t take much time at all.

latenlazy said:

Had*. Last two Zhuhai shows have shown that on the aerospace materials front they’ve become quite prolific. And it seems they’re aggressively introducing them into the commercial R&D process wherever they can, like with 3D printed parts and carbon fiber fan blades.

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AECC Sichuan , AECC Chengdu alongside NPU Xian recently published a complete research paper.. i just posting the headline of that paper.

Design and manufacturing method of multi-scale integrated load bearing thin-walled structure for application in next-generation aeroengine based on advanced laser processing technology​

The multi-scale structure， composed of the macro skeleton， lattice and micro surface， represents a novel type of structure with potential for high performance， multifunctionality and lightweight design. Advanced laser processing technology not only enhances the manufacturing capacity of high-performance structures， but also provides possibilities for the manufacturing of new complex structures. After providing a brief overview of the current design and manufacturing techniques on macro skeleton， lattice and micro surface， this paper introduces a multi-scale structure design method for advanced laser processing technology. Taking the intermediate case of a turbine engine as an example， the main load-bearing skeleton is designed using topology optimization technology for additive manufacturing. The lightweight lattice design is carried out by filling manufacturable lattice in low-density areas in topology oiptimization or low-stress areas in the optimized model， resulting in a weight reduction of over 20% compared to the original design. Additionally， micro groove structures for drag reduction are designed on the surface of the airflow channel for ultrafast laser etching processing. Simulation results indicate that the micro grooves exhibit a drag reduction effect exceeding 10%. By exploring the multi-scale integrated structure design based on advanced laser processing technology， this study establishes a creative structural design procedure and offers a valuable approach for the development of next-generation aeroengine structures.

gadgetcool5 said:

Both articles are trash, but the Eurasian Times article does mention "supply chain disruptions related to the advanced alloys" needed to produce the WS-15. That just happens to also be what a Chinese aerospace official themselves said about another advanced engine, the WS-20, last year:

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And since then, it is true we have not seen the WS-20 in serial production. So could it be possible that there is something real to this whole bottleneck with the supply chain for advanced alloys?

The metal alloys used in jet engines are one of the most technically challening parts. Since the engines work by compressing hot air, with higher temperatures generating more force, their efficiency depends on the ability of the metal to repeatedly withstand very high temperatures. If you cannot produce the advanced alloys used in the engine, you cannot really say you have mastered the engine.

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is there any reason that we are talking about military aerospace engine stuff in a civilian aviation thread?

I'm deleting everything before this as a warning for all of you

AG600 has successfully completed minimum take-off speed compliance test.