Chinese Engine Development

kwaigonegin said:

Hey! for a newbie you're pretty smart LOL I concur with your thoughts.... Welcome to the board.

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i would think anyone who isn't politically biased would likely come to the same conclusions if they looked at the information that's out there thoroughly and thought about it.

thanks for being accommodating, but i definately can't call myself a newbie... been lurking this forum occasionally since the j-10 was first officially publicized!

>here's something i posted in the j-10 thread in response to asif iqbal, but i think it is perhaps even more pertinent here.

Personally I believe that materials science and quality control are the major drawbacks that Chinese engineers face. China's comparative weakness in building engines has been a long known fact. Even back in the 1990s I remember hearing members of my family talk about how China could build cars but not reliable motors, even to this day many Chinese automobile manufacturers still must import motors and gearboxes.

I also recall them saying how China could build military planes but not commercial jets. I think this is justified by the fact that commercial planes must pass more stringent standards of reliability, and China simply did not have the ability to maintain the required level of consistency in quality control due to the aviation firms being state owned, and only recently broken down and changed to private management. (no adequate incentives or disincentives: no rewards for most workers in case of success, no chance of losing jobs in case of failure) additionally chinese aviation firms lack the existing intellectual capital available to western firms from having been on the market for decades.

Aerodynamic design has benefited tremendously in recent years from computer aided design and modelling, and thusly I think China has been able to make some breakthroughs in the area. Building engines however is a process that requires highly advanced materials science (not so easy to model) which are often closely guarded trade secrets held by a few firms in the most advanced countries. Compound the difficulties of achieving breakthroughs in materials science under military embargo with perhaps persistent issues of quality control, and we have the situation at hand.

Another problem for the WS-10A is that the AL-31 has huge economies of scale globally and in China, hence it would probably be significantly cheaper to keep on buying AL-31s and its spare parts for a lot of functions.

Chinese modern military equipment is pretty close to its global counterparts in terms of price (the J-10 was about $30 million per aircraft, the last time I checked).

Not to mention that the vast majority of PLAAF and PLANAF maintenance and air crews would be accustomed to the AL-31F, but not with the WS-10.

Skywatcher said:

Another problem for the WS-10A is that the AL-31 has huge economies of scale globally and in China, hence it would probably be significantly cheaper to keep on buying AL-31s and its spare parts for a lot of functions.

Chinese modern military equipment is pretty close to its global counterparts in terms of price (the J-10 was about $30 million per aircraft, the last time I checked).

Not to mention that the vast majority of PLAAF and PLANAF maintenance and air crews would be accustomed to the AL-31F, but not with the WS-10.

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In fact, I think AL-31 engine are even cheaper than WS-10A per unit. Mass produce things will only go cheaper. A major reason why PLAAF still buys Russian engine. Russian also realised they can't play punk with China like India for AL-31 engines as China has equivalent engine like WS-10A. They will sell AL-31 per unit at a competitive price. If they try to leech China, she will simply switch to an all WS-10A unit and kill off Saturn lifeline.

Many people think China just continue use Al-31 meaning China has problem with domestic WS-10A which is terribly wrong. PLAAF likes to go cheap too. They are not like western spending unnecessary extravaganza.

I don't see how price can be the impediment toward the goal of a domestic engine that will also be mass-produced. Knowledge from the production of the engine will also be used to produced other engines for other aircraft and for export. By being self-sufficient, there's no fear of supply being blocked.

t2contra said:

I don't see how price can be the impediment toward the goal of a domestic engine that will also be mass-produced. Knowledge from the production of the engine will also be used to produced other engines for other aircraft and for export. By being self-sufficient, there's no fear of supply being blocked.

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There is no doubt China is self sufficient. If Russian cut off AL-31 engine. China simply can turn full throttle on WS-10A and reply on that engine but at what cost? Now is not even wartime. Profits and sound business model still needs to be considered when running these organisation. There is no doubt a strong network of AL-31 engine , from manufacturing to spare has build up around this engine. And I think we do not need a rocket scientist to tell you the demand for AL-31 is far greater from countries like Algeria, Vietnam to Ethiopia than WS-10A. Remember WS-10A is based on CMF-56 core. It does not share many similiar component with AL-31. Tooling, repair and manufacturing will have significant difference. Definitely, a totally different overhaul plant and spare unit need to be setup for this 2 different engines.

Just becos its made in China does not mean it will be cheap if its produced not in greater number. The far higher unit produced of AL-31 significantly bring down the price.

Then you expect the massive overhaul plant for AL-31 engine in Chengdu to run empty in a few years time if PLAAF goes all WS-10A? PLA do not spend military money in these way. And it is also this massive overhaul plant that give PLAAF better assurances that PLAAF can still reply on AL-31 engine for a certain period of time even in wartime. As they would not run out of most spares quickly since these plant is able to overhaul and lengthen AL-31 engines life.

Lion said:

There is no doubt China is self sufficient. If Russian cut off AL-31 engine. China simply can turn full throttle on WS-10A and reply on that engine but at what cost? Now is not even wartime. Profits and sound business model still needs to be considered when running these organisation. There is no doubt a strong network of AL-31 engine , from manufacturing to spare has build up around this engine. And I think we do not need a rocket scientist to tell you the demand for AL-31 is far greater from countries like Algeria, Vietnam to Ethiopia than WS-10A. Remember WS-10A is based on CMF-56 core. It does not share many similiar component with AL-31. Tooling, repair and manufacturing will have significant difference. Definitely, a totally different overhaul plant and spare unit need to be setup for this 2 different engines.

Just becos its made in China does not mean it will be cheap if its produced not in greater number. The far higher unit produced of AL-31 significantly bring down the price.

Then you expect the massive overhaul plant for AL-31 engine in Chengdu to run empty in a few years time if PLAAF goes all WS-10A? PLA do not spend military money in these way. And it is also this massive overhaul plant that give PLAAF better assurances that PLAAF can still reply on AL-31 engine for a certain period of time even in wartime. As they would not run out of most spares quickly since these plant is able to overhaul and lengthen AL-31 engines life.

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I do not see China or any country at China's level of engine development to follow the business model doctrine even in peace time in matters of engines.

Engines are the legs of aircraft and it is essential to be as self-sufficient as possible even if it costs more. But we are talking about hundreds of engines, and being made in locally should not cost a great deal more. Economies of scale will come. By being able to build its own engines, it is also building up the supporting industries. There is a lot more to gain down the road.

The overhaul facility can be used to overhaul the WS-10. But even if it can't, it does not matter. China's parliament a few months had already planned to spend billions of dollars to build up the domestic engine industry.

China's state of international relations is not like that of Italy of UK, which can depend of supply from of engines and whole aircraft from more than one foreign nation. China is now dependent on only Russia. Their relations are friendly, but ten years later, who knows.

Surely it will changes, china will eventually switch to an all domestic engine in near future because Russian engine in future is not going to satisfy China demand when aircraft getting more demanding and thrust thirsty.

WS-10A is a good start.

I think it's important to that the competition part goes both ways. With the option of AL-31F around, it pushes SAC to continue to work hard at resolving engine problems and improving quality and lowering cost rather than just continue to believe that it will just get all the orders for no work. It's important to have continue to have competition.

Regardless of what problem China may have with WS-10A, it needs to push through, because otherwise it will have to rely on whatever the Russians have. So you have lack of leverage and the problem where the Russians might not be able to develop a next generation engine. And the development process of WS-10A, as painful as it may be, will only help future projects.

I just want to add something that has been covered by pissybits

What we are seeing from WS-10 is the natural progression of R&D by China in engine development, it is not uncommon for aero engines to follow through years of years of deployment, testing and problem solving, iteration after iteration until they arrive at the satisfactory product, even then it will still undergo observation and reporting if any fatigue/maintenance problem comes up which will only arise through accumulated hours of flight/operation.

There is no shortcut to this, and even if every single data is available for one engine, it is not applicable to the other.

However, this is China, where everything is at break neck pace, and one has to admit that WS-10 is not progressing as smoothly as everyone would expect. Frugality and cost is a non issue, sourcing your engine is as good as sourcing your plane from another country.