Chinese Engine Development

lcloo

lcloo

Captain
I am not responding to any post above concerning Chinese engines, just want to make aware that the top 5 companies from US, Sweden, Germany and Japan dominate the high end bearing products. Thus it is indeed a big breaking news for successful 50,000 hours tests from a Chinese institution..

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As we all know, more than 70% of the world bearing market share is shared by the top ten multinational bearing group companies. Among them, the United States, which accounts for 23% of the global market, 21% of the European Union, and 19% of Japan, are basically dominated by five companies such as Japan’s NSK, Sweden’s SKF, Germany’s FAG, and the United States Timken. At the same time, the high-end market of the world’s bearing industry is monopolized by the above-mentioned enterprises, while the middle and low-end market is mainly concentrated in China.

Also, the news on the 50,000 hours test:-
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On October 24, 2022, the anti-fatigue life test of key components of aero-engines carried out by the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials exceeded 50,000 hours, marking a new breakthrough in China’s high-end equipment manufacturing technology.

The key component of this fatigue test is the aero-engine main shaft bearing independently developed by China. The fatigue life of the equivalent accelerated test on the tester did not fail for 50,000 hours, setting a new record in China.
 
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vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
lcloo said:
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As we all know, more than 70% of the world bearing market share is shared by the top ten multinational bearing group companies. Among them, the United States, which accounts for 23% of the global market, 21% of the European Union, and 19% of Japan, are basically dominated by five companies such as Japan’s NSK, Sweden’s SKF, Germany’s FAG, and the United States Timken. At the same time, the high-end market of the world’s bearing industry is monopolized by the above-mentioned enterprises, while the middle and low-end market is mainly concentrated in China.

Also, the news on the 50,000 hours test:-
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“So far, the accelerated equivalent life has not failed for 50,000 hours, and the test is still in progress.”
 
A

antiterror13

Brigadier
lcloo said:
I am not responding to any post above concerning Chinese engines, just want to make aware that the top 5 companies from US, Sweden, Germany and Japan dominate the high end bearing products. Thus it is indeed a big breaking news for successful 50,000 hours tests from a Chinese institution..

Extract from:
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As we all know, more than 70% of the world bearing market share is shared by the top ten multinational bearing group companies. Among them, the United States, which accounts for 23% of the global market, 21% of the European Union, and 19% of Japan, are basically dominated by five companies such as Japan’s NSK, Sweden’s SKF, Germany’s FAG, and the United States Timken. At the same time, the high-end market of the world’s bearing industry is monopolized by the above-mentioned enterprises, while the middle and low-end market is mainly concentrated in China.

Also, the news on the 50,000 hours test:-
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

On October 24, 2022, the anti-fatigue life test of key components of aero-engines carried out by the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials exceeded 50,000 hours, marking a new breakthrough in China’s high-end equipment manufacturing technology.

The key component of this fatigue test is the aero-engine main shaft bearing independently developed by China. The fatigue life of the equivalent accelerated test on the tester did not fail for 50,000 hours, setting a new record in China.
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Interesting .. what is the chance that the US would ban selling super high end bearing to China? I hope they do ... ;)
 
sunnymaxi

sunnymaxi

Major
Registered Member
Blitzo said:
I take it J-20 is not mentioned either, and I suspect C919 is not mentioned as well?

If so, then my suspicions stand -- i.e.: be wary of which claims are directly quoted verbatim from CCTV and which are a result of a random account's own inferences.
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well you are right sir.

CCTV didn't mention J-20 engine neither C919 engine. this account deliberately add J-20/C919 to make his post more attractive. LAMO

antiterror13 said:
so do you think China still use imported bearings for WS-10C?
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nope. military engines don't require very high end bearings and nut/bolts. China does produce bearings but quality and durability legs behind as compared to market leaders up until 2021 when they broke foreign monopoly. WS-10/WS-20 engines entirely indigenous but after this breakthrough you can replace components to increase the service life of engine as CCTV mentioned. indeed a huge leap for domestic aviation industry.

this is a very critical breakthrough, not only for engines but for all high end industries coz of dual use. especially high speed trains , heavy duty gas turbines , civil airplanes and for many other fields.

gelgoog said:
The bearing industry is highly concentrated and much of it is in the West. Painfully so I think.
IIRC the Russians used imported bearings on the PD-14 aviation engine, beats me if they replaced those or not.
The bearing industry in Russia had major issues after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of the factories ended up in Kazakhstan I think. Russia became a major importer of Swedish bearings. Now with the current sanctions on Russia I suppose they will have to fix that problem eventually.
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its true. this industry highly concentrated in west and Japan.

i m not a technical person in this field but i heard, Four major industrial process require in high end bearings. very very tough to break.

Chinese have been trying since 2015 and they finally succeed. huge leap not only for aviation but of other high end industries as well.
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Cross posting in engine thread.

ACuriousPLAFan said:
J-20 fitted with WS-15 already taken its maiden flight. Apparently the speaker is a famous academician from Chinese Academy of Engineering. He is specialized in turbofan engines.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1602687065749131271

Video by @星辰大海SLC on Bilibili.

Isn't there a J-20 which undergone flight test late last year that was fitted with one WS-15 and the other one being AL-31? Or that this time is different, with both engines of the J-20 being WS-15s?
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N

nugroho

Junior Member
Tirdent said:
Running those screen caps through the translator would seem (the translation isn't the most intelligible) to corroborate what by78 already stated, notably the fact that comments refer to performance at the airframe level.



Do you not see the contradiction here?

Especially since, at least with the AL-41F, there is absolutely no need whatsoever to rely on guesses (educated or less so) and conjecture - virtually all relevant info on it is in the public domain. Including a claimed weight penalty for the Saturn-proprietary TVC nozzle design, if you dig deep: 50 kg per engine, which isn't a lot (~3%). There's also a total engine weight somewhere at 1604kg to the basic AL-31F's 1520kg and since it has various other tweaks (larger fan diameter etc.), 50kg for TVC sounds entirely plausible. There's further plenty of stuff, including drawings, on the Saturn TVC nozzle that, if you know the source of thrust loss in other TVC designs, allows you to figure out that this solution avoids it neatly. Clue: deviations from circular cross section.

And if we do want to make an *educated* guess, the slightly higher bypass ratio of the WS-10 would tend to make it a bit heavier, all else equal. Lower specific thrust, meaning less thrust per unit air mass flow and therefore larger turbomachinery for the same thrust. Not that at 0.8 vs. 0.6 BPR you'd expect to see a much of a difference, frankly it could easily get lost in the noise (TVC etc.), but still, that's the sound first principles conjecture in this case.

Regarding life, again a fairly sane guess can be made from the fact that the early WS-10 was too unreliable for even the twin engine J-11 application, and that the AL-31F was the replacement. It was only with the latest variants that the WS-10 could be used in the single-engine J-10, and then the AL-41F has longer life & MTBO than the AL-31FN that was previously fitted. So even if it is now better than the original Russian engine (as would be the case if the figures mentioned apply to the WS-10C) it could still be worse than the AL-41F. And, of course, the latter had already been around for more than 5 years by the time the transition was finally able to be made on the J-10...

All of this in no way detracts from the fact that China has closed the gap considerably over the past 20 years. It's now roughly 5 to 10 years behind Russia and in an industry where the product development cycle takes 15 to 20 years, that is not a lot at all. They are now less than a generation apart, i.e. China is introducing engines of the same sort of sophistication with merely a few years delay. Already, its portfolio is on the cusp of eclipsing Russia's for breadth if not quality. And once the economic fall out of the Ukraine invasion starts to hit home in the coming years, the remaining Russian lead likely stands to dwindle faster than it otherwise would have.
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Let's not talk about how Ws-10 c perform again Al-31 F or Al-41 F, because what China faces in the future will be USA, according to Totoro post #1135 in this forum, their F-100 had 1890 hours MTBO at that time, and I think their F-135 will be better than that.
In terms of power, we have reached parity with them ( not to mention WS-15 ), but if we talked about MTBO we still lack behind a lot.
Overhauling process needs time ( in real war, time is precious ), and engine is expensive
If our engine break frequently, then it will need a lot of budget.
Hope WS-15 can overcome this problem
 
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