For WS-10C we can extrapolate based on WS-10B for J-10C. It can’t be lower than that. A lot of the chicken blood analysis for WS-10C calls for 14.5 or even 15 tons of thrust which is simply ridiculous.
Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Why would that be ridiculous? I thought it was settled that the WS-10B has a thrust of 144kN and the WS-10C was speculated to be higher than 150kN.
Perhaps the controversy is over how much more powerful the WS-10C is than the WS-10B, in which case I don't think we have anything better than agnosticism. It could be the exact same engine with serrated nozzles or it might have a thrust improvement of 10%.
I remember reading that analysis. Loved it. The same guy also analyzed the F119 and I'll have to say I enjoyed both reads.
He also backed up his hypothesises and claims with evidence and data, and he works one of the institutes working with rockets, I believe. He knows some insiders that confirmed some of his thoughts.
Gotta put big caveats around the analysis being derived from these papers. Technically the listed thrust of the engine, the thrust “rating”, should be its max static thrust at sea level. Just because in the right conditions the WS-10C can achieve 15 tons doesn’t mean that’s what its actual max thrust at the “rated” condition is.
That said, max thrust at the rated condition is only a sliver of all the aspects which go into an engine’s performance. The F110 engine that the WS-10 shares lineage with in particular is supposed to have excellent performance characteristics, especially in terms of retaining thrust capacity at a wider range of the flight envelope, than the AL-31, so when we hear that the WS-10C is a notably superior engine it might be because even when its static sea level thrust were in ballpark of the AL-31 its effective performance in real use may be a whole lot better. Just like how not everything in a car motor is about horsepower, so is the case with jet engines and thrust ratings.
Why are people so obsessed with maximum
thrust anyway when metrics like performance envelope, MTBO, fuel efficiency, etc. are arguably more important? WS-10C is an adequate intermediate engine for ramping up J-20 production significantly until WS-15 is ready. It has served an important purpose for providing credible deterrence in both the East and the West.
thrust anyway when metrics like performance envelope, MTBO, fuel efficiency, etc. are arguably more important? WS-10C is an adequate intermediate engine for ramping up J-20 production significantly until WS-15 is ready. It has served an important purpose for providing credible deterrence in both the East and the West.
Max thrust does tell us *something* as a kind of summary representation of performance, especially if you can contextualize it with some other figures. I personally would love to know that max thrust number is for the WS-15 tbh. It’s one thing to know that a performance number is important and quite another to reduce everything about performance to that number.
Nobody would be upset if we got the spec sheets for the WS-10 series, but those other numbers are non-existent as opposed to murky like the benchtop thrust. It is a lot like the horsepower for a car without knowing anything about the torque at RPM range, fuel efficiency, gearbox performance, engine lifetime, etc. It'd be great to know all those numbers but we take what we can get here. Also,, it would be very unusual if the other numbers weren't in the same ballpark as the horsepower for engines of that class.
Pakistan operates Block 52 and are satisfied with WS-10B and that’s all the proof we need really. No need to go into nitty gritty details.
TIT doesn't tell you as much as you might think haha. It's *a* critical determinant for performance range but not the only one.