SamuraiBlue
Captain
You forgot one, the IHI XF-9, it has a dry thrust payload of 107.9 kN.
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Then I'd have also forgot YF-120.
I see IHI XF-9 as an engine without an aircraft (till now) and therefore it getting materialized is questionable.
Documentary on aircraft engine maintenance.
No Its still 2nd gen super alloy, I think its PW A1484. The key here is the thermal barrier coating and optimized cooling that is designed into the casting process or supercooling as you would call it. Putting these together gets you operating temperatures 600-700C above the melting temperature of the super alloy. If you incorporate CMC, it'll bump this even higher...
Make a breakthrough in the casting and you will kick the engine performance up a significant level. There is still some room to move in the existing technology before waiting for the revolutionary next step. China really ought to work harder here to even the playing field against the likes of PW/GE/RR otherwise it will be difficult not just for the fighters but also the likes of C919 to compete with airbuses/Boeings for fuel economy etc.
If you’ll look at China’s research output on fan blades there’s a whole lot on different forms of coating and cooling techniques.
I would prefer an engine with worse specs that is reliable and serviceable than an engine that is an headache to repair and cost twice the cost... I'm not sure that having top spec is always better...
Fan blades are a completely different beast though, especially with those high bypass turbines with the tips going nearly supersonic or supersonic. But with the newer metallic 3D printing its kind of a different avenue to catch up on those processes.
With the turbine blades, unless you have the fundamentals right in the investment casting, you can't really skip to the next stage of cooling / coatings. Gotta first make sure the single crystals are consistent and failure rate acceptable before moving to the next step casting the intricate passages and having the tools to refine them after casting, then having the tools to apply the coatings and inspect everything. You really need to spend enough money and not be scared of failure to get all the process right, and not rely on any individual on the factory floor.(of course incorporate their feedback and tweaks into the process)
I think a lot of those techniques are cross applicable though no? Sure the pairings of the materials are going to be different, but my point is just that if you survey what’s currently being published in research cooling and coating are actively on the radar as domains being developed.
Not really cross applicable though. One is going for creep strength under high temps, while the other is going for light weight and impact strength. They are using carbon fibres nowadays instead of titanium alloys for the fan blades, with maybe titanium alloy at the leading edge to help with impact resistance, while for the turbine we are still on the nickel super alloys. Sorry the fan material isn't my field since i have only been playing with GTs, but they are in completely different fields to the turbines.