Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Blackstone
Brigadier
I don't see how the use of Al-222-25 engines on the L-15 is related to the status of the WS-10 family. AVIC Engines is responsible for the development of domestic engines for the L-15, which hasn't even entered service with the PLAAF, suggesting that the project is of lower importance and development of a domestic engine even more so.
Contrastingly, the WS-10 family is developed by 606th Institute for PLAAF's front-line fighter, no doubt a highly important project and all J-11Bs save for the first batch are powered by it. To that end, the WS-10 project has fulfilled its purpose and is powering hundreds of China's premiere fighter.
Engineer
Major
Turn that around. Can we take Russian's and Ukrainian's claims at face value? Imagine if the Ukrainian official being interviewed admits that Chinese designed engines are just as good, what would it do to said Ukrainian's business? Notice how the Ukrainian official poked fun at the Russians in the article, but the Ukrainians themselves don't have a fifth generation fighter engine. These should give you an idea as to whether to take Ukrainian's statements at face value.
As to Russia, if their jet engine technology is so ahead, why don't they have a F-119's equivalent in their aircraft already? The fact that Russians are still currently working on the Izdeliye 30 puts them at the same technological level as China.
Now with regards to whether an engine is a "success". The Russians certainly treat the 117S as a success, taking every opportunity to claim how great this engine is and how China so desperately wants this engine. There is only one issue, which is that the engine tends to spontaneously combusted. Then, there is the WS-10. There are seven regiments of J-11B flying. Each regiment has around twenty-four aircraft, with each aircraft having two engines, that means 336 WS-10 are currently being flown. This number does not include spares, nor include those engines being flown on prototype Flankers. So, there are more WS-10 flying but with less high profile incidents. From a usability point of view, the Chinese are perfectly justified in claiming the WS-10 to be a success.
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I mentioned this over on CDF.
The title it makes it sound like Ukrainian engines supply a majority part of China's engines needs for its aerospace projects, when arguably it is the third least important supplier.
Ukrainian engines are currently mostly for the L-15 and other small aircraft, while Russian engines are being used for new build J-10s, and current Y-20 prototypes ans J-20 prototypes.
But WS-10s have supplied almost all new build flankers in the last few years (save for J-15) but that is still making up a significant portion of new build military aircraft.
So technically speaking, it is true that some Chinese military aerospace projects are still "depending" on Ukrainian aerospace engines... but at the same time the fraction of those projects in terms of both number and importance are far smaller than other types of aircraft which are powered by either indigenously produced engines or Russian produced engines.
And like others have said, nothing in the article is related to WS-10 at all -- all it says is that some staff of Ivchenko-Progress feel "Chinese efforts remain stymied by technological bottlenecks, despite public announcements and displays of "indigenous" engine designs" -- however we have no idea which "efforts" they are talking about. Is it the Minshan engine, or the WS-10 engine, or WS-15 or WS-13 or WS-9, or WS-20, or whatever? More importantly, even if they were specific, how much expertise do these individuals actually have in regards to assessing the latest Chinese engine developments, given China keeps such developments closely under wrap? Not to mention the article does not acknowledge the fact that at least one important turbofan engine has achieved quite widespread use and success, even despite "technological bottlenecks," namely the WS-10 aboard newbuild flankers in frontline service.
superdog
Junior Member
I don't see how those claims of research breakthrough would indicate that there should be a lot of world class Chinese jet engines in the field right now. If you're familiar with the development cycle of advanced aero engines, you know it takes lots of years to develop one successful model. Especially for a catch-up player like China, you will need to have many many similar breakthroughs happening first, and not until then can you start to mass produce world class engine. So we have been seeing these breakthroughs happening here and there for the last few years, that should be an expected progress, not a doubtful surprise, given China's known aircraft and engine development plan. If instead we don't have these breakthroughs happening in recent years, then it becomes highly doubtful if China could keep up with its engine needs in the future.
superdog
Junior Member
The answer is simple, the successfulness of the WS-10 should be judged by how it is used on newer J-10's and J-11/15/16, it has nothing to do with the engine on L-15.
lcloo
Captain
Development break through to finally producing serial production engines is a time consuming progress. What most people tend to over-looked is the time for building of the manufacturing plant, tools and machinery, production methods, sourcing of materials and components and training of production lines engineers and technicians.
A new production facility is just like a new aircraft, before it is operational it still need to be tested, and the initial pilot batch of engines need to be inspected for production method flaw etc.
And not until all flaw and defect are corrected on both hardware and software in the plant will the new production lines start to roll out new engines in full rate. This I believe will take time.
A new production facility is just like a new aircraft, before it is operational it still need to be tested, and the initial pilot batch of engines need to be inspected for production method flaw etc.
And not until all flaw and defect are corrected on both hardware and software in the plant will the new production lines start to roll out new engines in full rate. This I believe will take time.
Quickie
Colonel
Besides that, they will probably take all the sweet time they possibly can to even begin to consider the manufacturing of the engine before the production number of the engine has reached the economy of scale. That would depend very much on the sales prospect of the L-15 trainer jets.
Equation
Lieutenant General
But we can safely assume the WS-10 engines will be used more often than the AL-31 engines in the coming years for future PLAAF and PLANAF air crafts.
