That is long ago problem. Check out the lastest info. If really need maintenance every 20 hours. It will not install on operational J-11B and J-20 prototype.
People really need to stop spreading 10 years old news...
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
That is long ago problem. Check out the lastest info. If really need maintenance every 20 hours. It will not install on operational J-11B and J-20 prototype.
People really need to stop spreading 10 years old news...
Roger604
Senior Member
Obviously some members here have a bias against China and try to belittle it on every rubbish rumor.
The fact J-11B is being cranked out like dumpling with FWS10 should tell you something.
I don't know who you're referring to, but speaking for myself I do not go with rubbish rumours and I most definitely do not have a bias against or for China. If it was a China bias I was exhibiting I would have said something like "the WS-15 will be a trash engine and a feeble attempt to copy <insert other engine>". Instead I have merely insisted with good reasons (which I have not yet seen addressed) as to why we shouldn't expect China to suddenly pick up the rate of turbofan production. Primarily, I have pointed out that money cannot by itself speed up innovation which along with experience is a bottleneck for any country playing technological catchup, and for China modern turbofans are very new technology. I have seen of course attempts to restructure the analysis to suggest that money and not innovation is in fact the bottleneck due to tiered priority levels on different sectors of military advancement, but I have answered that and not heard a reply. If you disagree with the information I have used to back my analysis we are free to dispute sources, and I will be happy to change my mind given the weakness of most sources one can pick up from the internet. However, I do not think me disagreeing with reason that China's ability to turn out advanced turbofans will be the next best thing since the internet qualifies as me being biased. I at the very least hope that I have shown a willingness to discuss and reason (And if you have read my other responses in this forum you would probably note that I am hardly a China basher, in fact, I am Chinese).
As to the credibility of my information, I merely pick up things I've heard from trusted posters like tphuang and maya. It seems news of the WS10A keeps going back and forth, and we keep hearing about how problems turn up and are then solved a year later, and then turn up again. Of course nothing is for sure and the recent batch of J-11Bs with WS10As are encouraging, but bad news is cropping up again, which could just as easily imply new issues in the production line as rumour mongering by China bashers. After all it's not outside the realm of possibility that older issues were resolved by newer issues were found after the installation of those engines. Though this should be taken with some salt, it also shows how cautious we should be about assessing China's ability to speed up its ability to both design and produce modern turbofans, which is what I've been trying to get at for the last few posts.
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Roger604
Senior Member
You said: "The figure we've been hearing about the engine needing maintenance every 20 hours may be because of failing or broken parts, which only highlights China's continual struggle with manufacturing quality."
That sounds like you're taking random negative rumors at face value, even though J-11B are being cranked out en masse. Not a very neutral viewpoint IMO. And see how kroko got all excited by this.
The problem with your argument is that you think China must have prioritized turbofans early on to be able to defend air-space, in the same way that China prioritized SAMs.
But actually what China did is focus on turbojets, which are faster, cheaper, easier to make but have less range and more fuel consumption. Turbojets are what's in the old J-7's, J-8's and so on. During the 1980's China was also able to get supply of turbofans from the West until 6/4 incident like Spey in JH-7A.
So, indigenous turbofans were simply not needed until after JH-7A, which is basically J-10. The early J-10's were designed for indigenous turbofans. That program didn't go so well so they had to redesign and delay J-10. Transports that were to use western turbofans were also canceled.
Turbofans were not high priority until 2005 IMO because the focus had to be on missile / space technology. Now, they are high priority. That's also why all the transport programs are coming alive with great vigor. It's not a coincidence there is so much talk about going "beyond the first island chain."
You've answered your own question. J-11B is being cranked out with FWS10. First successful Chinese turbofan program is done. That's the bottom line.
It's not being biased to explore the possibilities. Doing analysis means considering the what ifs all the time and can help you determine how feasible a rumour or dataset is. If that rumour were true it would fit into the larger picture we've heard about manufacturing deficiencies. If it weren't, well, then they've obviously overcome those problems. Just because we saw a picture with a few J-11Bs with the WS-10A doesn't necessarily mean they're being cranked out en masse. While I personally felt pretty confident production problems were overcome when we saw those pictures, we haven't seen many follow up pictures in a while, nor have we seen J-10s with WS-10As, which may or may not imply that new problems have sprung up (it's not abnormal for any pioneering technology). That's not to say those aren't true, but it does say we should still be cautious about our assessments for China's abilities to produce state of the art turbofans.
Just because someone gets excited about something I've said does not mean I endorse that kind of response, nor does it indicate bias on my part. Nor does that sort of excitement always indicate negativity.
You're addressing a side point. The problem with your argument was that you neglected that the J-10 and the WS-10A have been in development for two decades now. If we go with your argument that money is the bottleneck due to defence priorities, then that bottleneck should have been resolved twenty years ago.
The fact that the WS10 has been a key project for Chinese defence in the last twenty years tells us more about what China has been prioritizing. In fact what we know about China's foreign procurement patterns in the 80s and 90s affirms the notion that turbofans were an early top priority, because China would not have gone through the effort of buying expensive foreign products if it wasn't trying to reverse engineer/learn something from them (and they did copious amounts of both). The reason their transport programs are coming alive is because they've finally made big break throughs with turbofans. In other words, those programs are a consequence of the earlier prioritizing of turbofans, not a signal that they will finally begin prioritizing them now.
I used was. I'll be more comfortable with asserting the FWS10 has smoothed out all its problems when we can see another set of photos indicating a new batch of J-11Bs with the engine, or when J-10s also adopt it.
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I think Chinese fanboys just mixed MTBMA with TBO.
TBO is very important to any AF because it affects the readiness of AF. Up till now, both Chinese and Russian engines have been lagged far behind on TBO of aeroengines because they don't have the know-how to build monocrystaline turbo blade. I read somewhere the TBO of 117S is only 500 hrs but F100-PW-229's is 6000 cycles(I take it as approximately 10,000-15,000 hrs by Russian/Chinese criteria? ) If the article A.Man suggested is ture, that means WS-10A also uses monocrystaline turo blade, I'll be sure its TBO can beat AL-31's(or it may have higher thrust by choosing higher turbine inlet temperature at the cost of TBO to power 4G fighters like J-20).
MTBMA just relates with some rutine check-up works with aeroengines, like putting a optical fibre probe into the engine via some check port to view if there are fatigue cracks. 20 hrs is not a big deal though I think western engines are better than Chinese and Russian engines on this.
Since WS-10 is a new engine, usually the first batch of mass produced engines is chosen as fleet leaders to detect and prevent potential life-dependent failures. That means they are supposed to be checked more frequently than mature engines.
In the photos of this website
the Chinese words on the red banner of the first photo is "celebration for Taihang passed its 300 hrs inititial lifespan test" and the third photo's is "...(celebration for Taihang passed its)150 hrs persistent-running test for design authentification".
I believe these photos was shot before design authentification in 2005. I think the "initial lifespan" was referring TBO at the time, means the the time between a engine is built and its first overhaul; and "150 hrs persistent-running test" means they had tested the engine on a test bed for 150 hrs with out any pause or without any maintenance; though I agree the 20 hrs MTBMA may be true when they use these engine on planes, they know it isn't like on a test bed, they should be cautious.
As for assembly, I don't think a worker who screws fans on aeroengines is better than a worker who bolts cylinders on car engines. In Western countries, workers in aviation industry don't have tenure like professors. When the mass production line of F-22 was shut down by politicians like Gates and F-35 was financially messed up by their CEOs and MBAs, where would you suppose those poor workers who produce them to go?
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Those workers probably get moved to the production of other airplanes
. Plus in the US I think (though I cannot confirm) you have to have a certain education level to work in aircraft manufacturing. Certain hi-tech industries are just like that (for example nanofabrication). I'm sure that's probably also true of China, but there's also a lot less experience with overall quality control in Chinese manufacturing, and Chinese machining technology still hasn't quite caught up to the developed countries' (as implied with its difficulty manufacturing monocrystalline blades). A modern turbofan is a very difficult thing to assemble, especially if there are problems in the quality of your parts. While bolting on engine parts might not be difficult, the engine parts themselves are subcontracted and therefore the quality of parts might be difficult to control. In other words, it might not be assembly but parts manufacturing that's the issue. If there are problems it could either be technical or organizational, but I wouldn't be able to tell you which or where. Someone would have to report specifics for us to know. In any case there are a lot of things that can go wrong in the line of production, and it's not unusual for a hi-tech sector in China to experience these sorts of problems. Even though China has been catching up on overall research and design, a lot of hi-tech sectors report higher manufacturing fail rates when compared to foreign firms (though not enough to offset their labour advantage).
antiterror13
Brigadier
I think we should stop using the terminology "western engine/technology" ... you are confusing Western technology with American technology. Apart from American, British and French to some extent ... I don't think there is any other western country that can produce reliable turbofan engines ... let alone any Asian country apart from China
maozedong
Banned Idiot
its not rumor, PLA newspaper has reported that on January 6, the Central Military Committee to Gan Xiaohua recorded a first celebration was held at the Air Force Institute of equipment. Read out at the Central Military Committee Chairman Hu Jintao signed an order, and Gan Xiaohua awarded a first medal and certificate.
I think this award related to J-20, from the new photos show that another J-20 prototype has installed WS-10 series engine.