Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Sorry for asking, but why there seems to have no plan for the FC-31 or J-35 to use the new WS-15 engine as well, only the J-20?
J-35/FC-31 should eventually get the WS-19.
Because ones a heavy fighter and another one a medium jet.
Just curious - Do you still have the link for the image source?
It'd be really amazing if China already has VTOL-capable engines under development. Suitable for not only fighter jets, but also combat drones as well.
This would be very useful for Type 075 LHDs and Type 076 LHAs in the coming future, for instance.
Copy that.
So basically the same analogy with F-22 vs F-35 and Su-57 vs Su-75, if I'm not mistaken?
by78
General
The forum (FYJS) no longer exists.
Ah, sadge...
So far, no news, no information updates on said VTOL-capable engine project anywhere?
If we’re going by Gongke’s account the 624 GTRE developed and tested the engine core with Xi’an (this was back in 2006-8), handed it over to Liming for further development, and after the basic design was completed the engine was presumably handed back to Xi’an for the rest of development and testing.
I’m going to take this opportunity to go a bit off tangent now and share a hypothesis about the WS-15’s development that I’ve been thinking a lot about the past few years.
Presumably during the core design hand off process there was a spat between GTRE and Liming where Liming wanted to start over with a new engine core design because they thought GTRE’s engine core design was insufficient for reaching the requirements of the engine, but as I recall Gongke himself never clarified which core design ultimately got used, and he himself might not actually know.
My *conjecture* is that in the middle of that spat the AECC reorganization started and whatever work on the engine design either side did was all handed off to Xi’an, and by the time we got some sign that a full engine prototype was being built around 2013-2014 they had already changed their development approach to be more iterative, and to be more ambitious about drawing from a broader range of component technologies through the pooling R&D of all the different institutes. It’s no coincidence, I think, that around the time AECC was forming we also started seeing more rapid iterations on the WS-10, as well as a proliferation of variants. Around this time we also saw a jump in the target thrust figures for the WS-15, some chatter about dealing with and resolving fan vibration issues, improved compression ratios for the engine core compressor etc.
My guess is that basically once the engine was handed off to Xi’an and the AECC reorganization happened Xi’an more or less took the pieces they were given and essentially reset the development process from scratch, which in my opinion could explain why after engine core testing completed in 2008 it took 5-6 years to see signs that a prototype was being l built, and why we seem to be about 5 years delayed from the original target date we were hearing for completion. Now, this is an extremely *speculative extrapolation* based on a bunch of inferences from different things we’ve heard about this engine over the last decade and a half. If some version of this story is more or less correct, Xi’an should be seen as the primary subsidiary that handled the WS-15’s design and development, and they essentially chose to prolong development to try to realize a more advanced design than what was originally expected with the engine core that was tested all the way back in 2008.
F15 vs FA18 or Mig 29 vs Su27