Chinese Engine Development
- Thread starter jackbh
- Start date
Yes, and? Nobody said otherwise.
CMC rotors certainly help quite a bit, but probably not as much as you might be imagining:
They're lighter, yes. They can withstand extreme temperatures better, yes. etc. But for rotors where the blades experience extreme forces, with the CMCs now, it actually makes more sense to opt for cooled nickel-based superalloy rotors, as they have higher tensile strengths. That's better fatigue resistance, FOD resistance, and less prone to fracturing. All that and it requires just (well, as "just" as you get in gas turbine contexts
) some extra cooling. And where can you get that? By using CMC stators. Boom. Best of both worlds with a lot less effort and majority of the results.
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GE tried both options and they let Congress to choose from, as reported in this article in 2023.Yes, and? Nobody said otherwise.
CMC rotors certainly help quite a bit, but probably not as much as you might be imagining:
View attachment 154044
They're lighter, yes. They can withstand extreme temperatures better, yes. etc. But for rotors where the blades experience extreme forces, with the CMCs now, it actually makes more sense to opt for cooled nickel-based superalloy rotors, as they have higher tensile strengths. That's better fatigue resistance, FOD resistance, and less prone to fracturing. All that and it requires just (well, as "just" as you get in gas turbine contexts
"Next to the fan frame, GE had laid out two versions of blades used in the second stage of a low-pressure turbine, one made of metal and the other composed of ceramic matrix composites (CMC). The edges of the metal blade, which is exposed to temperatures up to 2,400F in a normal fighter engine, are perforated by dozens of tiny holes, which allow cooling air to flow through the blade and help reduce blade surface temperature to 1,900F. By contrast, the CMC blade is 30% lighter despite being solid, with its material properties capable of enduring the heat of the exhaust gases without active cooling."
Is anyone discussing the issue of the carrier-based WS10 (perhaps we will call it WS10H)? We can see that except for the J15T No. 1518 at the Zhuhai Air Show, which uses the WS10H engine, almost all other J15T/J15D in photos and videos still use the Russian AL31F series engine. Why? Did the development of WS10H encounter problems?
Inb4 "worse throttle responsiveness":
It is true that the *old* WS-10s do have a throttle responsiveness problem, but IIRC since they incorporated contra-rotating turbines, that has never been a problem again.
But why hasn't the new engine been installed? In the latest aircraft carrier photos, the J15T/D is still the black AL31F
If I would have to guess, it's that the WS-10 family was never considered the level of anti-corrosion carrier ops require. Then, the development of a naval variant started relatively late in terms of the whole program.
Yes it has been discussed.
Production J-15s of all variants (vanilla, J-15T, J-15D etc) all use Al-31s, while J-15T prototype s/n 1518 uses WS-10, and we have also seen past vanilla J-15 prototypes use WS-10s as one.
The consensus has not particularly changed since over a decade ago when we first were aware of one off J-15 prototypes using WS-10 while production J-15s used Al-31s -- the answer is that for whatever reason the PLAN prefers to power production J-15s with Al-31s for now, however they clearly are continuing to test J-15 variant prototypes with WS-10s in an ongoing fashion.
Fine. I acknowledge that I may have over-reacted.
But I certainly don't want to hear "just another year "just two more years" "only a little more time" "will be available very soon" repeatedly, over and over again, every single g0d-damn time - Until the "is the WS-15 finally ready for J-20A/J-36/J-XDS?" question being asked in effing 2035. The same goes for the WS-19 meant for the J-35/A.
And the CJ1000A's "still stuck in developmental hell when the US is already openly threatening LEAP cutoff" dilemma certainly isn't helping the case either.
If anything, I've been hearing the same thing for as long as I've done PLA-watching. There's also the WJ-10/AEP400/AEP500 meant for the KJ-600 and Y-30, WS-17 meant for the JL-10, WZ-XX meant for the long-delayed AHL, etc etc - Where the hell are they?! All of them seems to have gone "poof".
It's all looking more and more like endless cycles of promises after promises, with little to show for. And it's a really disappointing development to see.
I can be very pessimistic, I know.
But I certainly don't want to hear "just another year "just two more years" "only a little more time" "will be available very soon" repeatedly, over and over again, every single g0d-damn time - Until the "is the WS-15 finally ready for J-20A/J-36/J-XDS?" question being asked in effing 2035. The same goes for the WS-19 meant for the J-35/A.
And the CJ1000A's "still stuck in developmental hell when the US is already openly threatening LEAP cutoff" dilemma certainly isn't helping the case either.
If anything, I've been hearing the same thing for as long as I've done PLA-watching. There's also the WJ-10/AEP400/AEP500 meant for the KJ-600 and Y-30, WS-17 meant for the JL-10, WZ-XX meant for the long-delayed AHL, etc etc - Where the hell are they?! All of them seems to have gone "poof".
It's all looking more and more like endless cycles of promises after promises, with little to show for. And it's a really disappointing development to see.
I can be very pessimistic, I know.
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