Chinese Engine Development

montyp165 said:

Historically Chinese have placed a greater emphasis on reliability and serviceability of equipment than the Russians have, since Chinese equipment would be expected to be in the field for longer periods of time and didn't have the luxury of having it sent back to the factory for rebuilding at regular intervals, as Chinese warfighting experience during the 20th century had indicated. This is why Chinese built equivalents of Russia equipment tended to be better built such as the Type 56 rifle and J-6 fighters, plus the Chinese experience of using western hardware reinforced that approach too. That's why for Chinese extending the MTBO to 1500 hours from 1000 hours for me is a continuation of that approach and is worthy of respect, and is in fact closer to the traditional US approach than the Russian one in terms of equipment serviceability.

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China did not extend MTBO from 1000 hours to 1500 hours. It extended service life in 1500 hours. It could only extend initial MTBO to 1500 hours if it had in fact built the engine.

Hendrik_2000 said:

Where did you get the number of 3000 hr service life.? Again your condescending view of China cloud your judgement .

Indian lost 5 Su MKI jet and China J11B has no fatal accident so far . China itself lost 9 or 10
J10A due to engine failure So the Russian engine is not getting better with time

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There was definitely a J-11B with WS-10 that crashed early on, which is why the original J-11B were grounded in SAC airfield without engines while WS-10 issues were sorted out. You can believe it or not. At the same time, you will always get greater reliability out of 2 engines vs 1 engine for obvious reasons.

I don't consider you expert in Aero engine So whatever you write is your personal opinion.

Here is the Indian experience dated 2015 which is only last year

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Engine failures is fast becoming a major concern for Air Force and also puts a question mark on India's ability to defend its skies. Another problem area that senior Air Force officers point out is serviceability. "Serviceability of the aircraft is about 50 per cent only," an officer said. It means at any given time, roughly half out of a fleet of 200 jets are available for operational purposes. This becomes crucial in times of emergencies like war.

Mr Parrikar said that the engines were scheduled to be overhauled after every 1000 hours of flying, but the defects started showing-up after only 500 hours of flying. The minister said that Russia-based NPO Saturn, manufacturers of Su-30 Al-31FP engines, offered to make "nine technological improvements" during overhauls, and added that after the modifications the engines were flying for upto 900 hours.

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India uses AL-31FP which has TVC module, so it's a different variant and has more areas that could cause problems. Even the article you listed, it's basically saying that initial overhaul was 500 hours instead of the maximum of 1000 hours. There is no indication how much money India is spending to overhaul its engines. If it does not spend a lot of money on overhauling, then the service life is not going to reach the original expectations.

And remember, India license manufactures the AL-31FP and probably does the maintenance and repairs themselves to. So the question here is whether this says more about India's engine manufacturers and their MRO facilities. Remember, we probably don't want to compare Chinese engine industry to India's engine industry. You want to look up, not down.

If we were to make the same estimation that PLAAF needing to do initial overhaul AL-31F after 500 hours instead of 1000, that means with its overhauling effort, the service life gets increased to 3 times of MTBO. And we know China has spent a lot of money on the Chengdu MRO line for AL-31F, because it wants to do as much in house as possible. That is still the same as the original AL-31F spec of service life = 3 x MTBO. In the end of the day, putting more resources into the overhauling process do result in longer service life. And the original specs of 3000 hours were probably achieved from complete overhauls that are very expensive. And if China got to 1500 hours of service life from initial overhaul of after 500 hours, that simply indicates how much China is spending in the overhauling process rather than doing anything special.

Also when you critic articles, you have to read about the source and intention of the story. Chinese story comes from the point of view of promoting achievements of China aerospace industry. Indian story comes from the view of Indians complaining about Russian weapons. You are comparing apples to oranges here.

also on the issue of Chinese engines and crashes. There were definitely issues with WS-10A in the beginning causing at least one crash that led to the delays in the J-11B program. The picture of J-11B sitting at SAC airfield without engine from those days should tell you about the troubled start. I personally don't think that kind of stuff is unexpected given that flanker series had been using a more mature engine and you always get issues when using a brand new engine. It speaks for the will of PLAAF that they stuck through with all of WS-10's initial problems and now it is in service with many J-11B regiments. If you read many of the big shrimps comment on WS-10, it definitely did not provide J-11B with the same level of flight performance as AL-31F in the beginning. This may no longer be the case as time goes on and now it's regarded to be reliable and shows enough performance that we are seeing it on J-10B. That's probably the best indictment of how far the program has proceeded. But I think it's way to simple to say J-11B hasn't had any crashes and that shows WS-10 is more reliable. We don't hear about J-11A/Su-30/Su-27 crashes either. If anything, that indicates either the Indian built AL-31FP are just really unreliable or Indians flight program is more risky than China's. If latter is the case, then China has more to work on in its flight training programs.

Also another thing to think about is that China's aeroengine industry cannot be thought of as a single entity but many entities with factories at Shenyang, Chengdu, Xi'an, Guizhou. And certainly, some have shown to be more capable than others. There are reasons why Xi'an is the leading manufacturer of both WS-15 and WS-20.

tphuang said:

China did not extend MTBO from 1000 hours to 1500 hours. It extended service life in 1500 hours. It could only extend initial MTBO to 1500 hours if it had in fact built the engine.

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The service life of the base AL-31F was already 1500 hours with a MTBO of 500 hours, so if the base service life is already 1500 hours then there's nothing to extend in the first place and thus nothing to be claimed. That's why the Xinhua article claims only makes sense if it is an actual improvement over the baseline.

tphuang said:

China did not extend MTBO from 1000 hours to 1500 hours. It extended service life in 1500 hours. It could only extend initial MTBO to 1500 hours if it had in fact built the engine.


There was definitely a J-11B with WS-10 that crashed early on, which is why the original J-11B were grounded in SAC airfield without engines while WS-10 issues were sorted out. You can believe it or not. At the same time, you will always get greater reliability out of 2 engines vs 1 engine for obvious reasons.

India uses AL-31FP which has TVC module, so it's a different variant and has more areas that could cause problems. Even the article you listed, it's basically saying that initial overhaul was 500 hours instead of the maximum of 1000 hours. There is no indication how much money India is spending to overhaul its engines. If it does not spend a lot of money on overhauling, then the service life is not going to reach the original expectations.

And remember, India license manufactures the AL-31FP and probably does the maintenance and repairs themselves to. So the question here is whether this says more about India's engine manufacturers and their MRO facilities. Remember, we probably don't want to compare Chinese engine industry to India's engine industry. You want to look up, not down.

If we were to make the same estimation that PLAAF needing to do initial overhaul AL-31F after 500 hours instead of 1000, that means with its overhauling effort, the service life gets increased to 3 times of MTBO. And we know China has spent a lot of money on the Chengdu MRO line for AL-31F, because it wants to do as much in house as possible. That is still the same as the original AL-31F spec of service life = 3 x MTBO. In the end of the day, putting more resources into the overhauling process do result in longer service life. And the original specs of 3000 hours were probably achieved from complete overhauls that are very expensive. And if China got to 1500 hours of service life from initial overhaul of after 500 hours, that simply indicates how much China is spending in the overhauling process rather than doing anything special.

Also when you critic articles, you have to read about the source and intention of the story. Chinese story comes from the point of view of promoting achievements of China aerospace industry. Indian story comes from the view of Indians complaining about Russian weapons. You are comparing apples to oranges here.

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I use Indian data because they used the "unadulterated version of AL31"
Once again the failure in in Indian Al 31 has nothing to do with thrust vectoring part

They count 66 engine failure out of 66 they find 33 due to metal chip in lubricant and 11 due to vibration So they trace 44 due to simple bearing failure due to fitting, fatigue and manufacturing quality.
And no it is not because of poor maintenance I have worked with many Indian engineer and I have high respect for their skill and professionalism. IN fact they found the cause and undertaking repair on their own!

SO ONCE AGAIN IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPLICATED ENGINE

India’s Sukhoi-30 fleet is plagued by engine troubles and is also battling poor serviceability.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar Tuesday said the Russian-origin fighters recorded as many as 35 engine failures/engine-related problems between January 2013 and December 2014.

Failure of bearings, used to reduce friction between moving parts, was the cause behind engine trouble, Parrikar told Rajya Sabha. As bearings operate under severe conditions, metal fatigue can cause particles to flake off or fragment leading to complications.

Parrikar said India had resolved the bearing problem by “arranging better lubrication (to prevent wear and tear), better fitment of bearings and better quality of oil.”

“Out of total 69 cases in the last three years, 33 cases are due to finding of chips in the oil, 11 due to vibration in the engine (caused by bearing problem) and 8 cases because of low pressure of lubricating oil,” Parrikar said in a detailed reply in the House. In all, engines coming in for overhaul will have nine modifications.

Now about the grounding of J11 It is precautionary measure because the early version of WS 10 show low MTBF. It is only prudence to ground the fleet until they rectify the cause
This incident happen in 2011 barely 1 year after WS 10 went into production.
Any new engine will suffer teething problem even the F16 with F100 engine they fall from the sky regularly. It wan not until they change the engine to F200 that F16 achieve the reliability goal

The F100 engine had some teething problems during its initial years of operations. A phenomenon called stagnation stall would usually cause the engine to shut down and not restart until maintenance could be performed. This was (sort of) okay in the twin-engined F-15, but it got very quiet after a stagnation stall in the F-16 and a number of aircraft were lost to this situation.Pratt & Whitney developed a variant of the F100 for the F-16, the F100-PW-200, to minimize the problem but problems continued with the engine.

You are assuming without any evidence that there is accident. Prove it if you can with Photo again There is no known photo of WS 10 wreck.
And it is not due to censorship Everybody has cell phone in China today even in the most remote part Any accident will be shown on weibo or any other forum.

Russian quoted 1500 MTBO life is more exaggerated claim, wishful thinking than reality. The Indian quoted 900 hr So yeah China did improve the MTBO to 1500 So it extend the service life of the engine

Hendrik_2000 said:

They count 66 engine failure out of 66 they find 33 due to metal chip in lubricant and 11 due to vibration So they trace 44 due to simple bearing failure due to fitting, fatigue and manufacturing quality.
And no it is not because of poor maintenance I have worked with many Indian engineer and I have high respect for their skill and professionalism. IN fact they found the cause and undertaking repair on their own!

SO ONCE AGAIN IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPLICATED ENGINE

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The issue I find with Chinese and Indian engineers I work with is that the bright is really bright and the lame is really lame; where unlike the US / Germany, engineers are all at a pretty consistent level as a base.

Technicians and Technologists.... now that is a different question.

I will only say that I have spent more than a year talking to Indian manufacturer which I normally will need a week or two with Chinese manufacturers or a week with a north american one to design a product that didn't come out as I have instructed; worse of all, it didn't even work.

Lezt said:

The issue I find with Chinese and Indian engineers I work with is that the bright is really bright and the lame is really lame; where unlike the US / Germany, engineers are all at a pretty consistent level as a base.

Technicians and Technologists.... now that is a different question.

I will only say that I have spent more than a year talking to Indian manufacturer which I normally will need a week or two with Chinese manufacturers or a week with a north american one to design a product that didn't come out as I have instructed; worse of all, it didn't even work.

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Exactly right, Chinese manufacturers are top class (the trick is to find the good ones). Regarding Chinese/Indian Engineer ... also exactly right ... the gap is huge and huge between the super bright and lame.

But remember if let's say only 1% of Chinese engineer (I know its more than that) are super bright .. it would mean hundred thousands of them and counting every year by 60,000 of them (1% x 6 Millions)

antiterror13 said:

Exactly right, Chinese manufacturers are top class (the trick is to find the good ones). Regarding Chinese/Indian Engineer ... also exactly right ... the gap is huge and huge between the super bright and lame.

But remember if let's say only 1% of Chinese engineer (I know its more than that) are super bright .. it would mean hundred thousands of them and counting every year by 60,000 of them (1% x 6 Millions)

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I think you guys are into highly questionable and racist territory to sustain an argument. As if throwing out fallacious straw man reasoning isn't enough you have to add racist comments.

Brumby said:

I think you guys are into highly questionable and racist territory to sustain an argument. As if throwing out fallacious straw man reasoning isn't enough you have to add racist comments.

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I don't see any racist comment here .. and I am Chinese myself

montyp165 said:

The service life of the base AL-31F was already 1500 hours with a MTBO of 500 hours, so if the base service life is already 1500 hours then there's nothing to extend in the first place and thus nothing to be claimed. That's why the Xinhua article claims only makes sense if it is an actual improvement over the baseline.

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it's not 1500 hours in practice. In practice, the service life before the firs overhaul was several hundred hours with PLAAF. And apparently about 500 hours with IAF.

Hendrik_2000 said:

I use Indian data because they used the "unadulterated version of AL31"
Once again the failure in in Indian Al 31 has nothing to do with thrust vectoring part

They count 66 engine failure out of 66 they find 33 due to metal chip in lubricant and 11 due to vibration So they trace 44 due to simple bearing failure due to fitting, fatigue and manufacturing quality.
And no it is not because of poor maintenance I have worked with many Indian engineer and I have high respect for their skill and professionalism. IN fact they found the cause and undertaking repair on their own!

SO ONCE AGAIN IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPLICATED ENGINE

India’s Sukhoi-30 fleet is plagued by engine troubles and is also battling poor serviceability.

Defence minister Manohar Parrikar Tuesday said the Russian-origin fighters recorded as many as 35 engine failures/engine-related problems between January 2013 and December 2014.

Failure of bearings, used to reduce friction between moving parts, was the cause behind engine trouble, Parrikar told Rajya Sabha. As bearings operate under severe conditions, metal fatigue can cause particles to flake off or fragment leading to complications.

Parrikar said India had resolved the bearing problem by “arranging better lubrication (to prevent wear and tear), better fitment of bearings and better quality of oil.”

“Out of total 69 cases in the last three years, 33 cases are due to finding of chips in the oil, 11 due to vibration in the engine (caused by bearing problem) and 8 cases because of low pressure of lubricating oil,” Parrikar said in a detailed reply in the House. In all, engines coming in for overhaul will have nine modifications.

Click to expand...

India uses AL-31FP on all their flankers. This is well known. Even if the actual problem didn't happen on TVC modules, it's still a different engine. Whether you respect India engineers or not is relevant, since you are comparing apples to oranges once you compare India built and maintained engines vs Russia built and Chinese maintained engines. And yes, I have no doubt that India MRO facilities can find and repair engines, that's what MRO facilities are for. But that does not change the fact that these engines are build in India and that China has a more advance MRO facility than India does.

Now about the grounding of J11 It is precautionary measure because the early version of WS 10 show low MTBF. It is only prudence to ground the fleet until they rectify the cause
This incident happen in 2011 barely 1 year after WS 10 went into production.
Any new engine will suffer teething problem even the F16 with F100 engine they fall from the sky regularly. It wan not until they change the engine to F200 that F16 achieve the reliability goal

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The F100 engine had some teething problems during its initial years of operations. A phenomenon called stagnation stall would usually cause the engine to shut down and not restart until maintenance could be performed. This was (sort of) okay in the twin-engined F-15, but it got very quiet after a stagnation stall in the F-16 and a number of aircraft were lost to this situation.Pratt & Whitney developed a variant of the F100 for the F-16, the F100-PW-200, to minimize the problem but problems continued with the engine.

You are assuming without any evidence that there is accident. Prove it if you can with Photo again There is no known photo of WS 10 wreck.
And it is not due to censorship Everybody has cell phone in China today even in the most remote part Any accident will be shown on weibo or any other forum.

Russian quoted 1500 MTBO life is more exaggerated claim, wishful thinking than reality. The Indian quoted 900 hr So yeah China did improve the MTBO to 1500 So it extend the service life of the engine

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Believe what you will, this was discussed a lot on Chinese forums with people who know the situation. You don't ground a fleet and not install them for a year on minor issues. Your F100 examples doesn't work, since WS-10 was not being installed on J-10 at that time, only J-11B.

China included service life to 1500 hours.

There are many such pieces promoting Chinese aviation industry every year. It's important to figure out what they are trying to say.