Chinese Engine Development

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ACuriousPLAFan

Brigadier
Registered Member
REautomaton said:
According to some not entirely reliable sources, the reason UADF did not adopt 2D TVC is due to the lower reliability of a single engine compared to dual engines. I think this explains why we see it on the J-XDS but not on the UADF. I believe that as reliability improves, we will see it in subsequent batches of test aircraft.
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Potentially due to the ability of UADFs to be more attritable (if not expandable) than manned platforms (even at comparably lower degrees for high-tier UADFs versus mid/low-tier UADFs) as well.

The more sophisticated and expensive a platform becomes, the less capable it is for the operator (in this case, the PLAAF) to accept attrition of such platforms due to the inherent cost, effort and resource consumption challenges from its development, procurement and deployment.
 
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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
The sooner China starts working on VCE engines the better.

One major mistake the Soviets made was not developing military turbofan engines sooner. So Soviet aircraft had less endurance and range than US aircraft.
After Stalin died, Khrushchev got infatuated with rocketry and development of military aviation was severely drained of resources. Of several proposed turbofan engine designs only the civilian D-20 engine from Soloviev was pursued. All others for bombers (Kuznetsov NK-6) and fighters (Klimov VK-3) were cancelled. This only changed when Brezhnev came in and military turbofans came out in the late 1970s.

Especially in the Pacific range matters.
 
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sunnymaxi

sunnymaxi

Major
Registered Member
gelgoog said:
The sooner China starts working on VCE engines the better.

One major mistake the Soviets made was not developing military turbofan engines sooner. So Soviet aircraft had less endurance and range than US aircraft.
After Stalin died, Khrushev got infatuated with rocketry and development of military aviation was severely drained of resources. Of several proposed turbofan engine designs only the civilian D-20 engine from Soloviev was pursued all others for bombers and fighters were cancelled.

Especially in the Pacific range matters.
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China is working on two different VCE designs from two different AECC subsidiaries. at least since 2015 publicly.

design has completed and Engine related material and technologies made breakthrough. said by Liu Daxiang in December, 2022.
 
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latenlazy

Brigadier
gelgoog said:
It is not impossible to shorten these cycles if you have access to outside information.
The Soviets reverse engineered the Nimonic metal alloy by figuring out its chemical and structural composition (via chromatography, mass spectrometry and crystallography) from metal shavings. But then you still have to figure out how to produce the material, source the base materials for it, figure out the treatment processes, how forming is done, or whatever.

In the case of engine design it is possible to do it in 5 years. But this is using already available and well tested engine architecures and materials. You won't get a bleeding edge technology engine by doing this.
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20 years to develop materials is an outdated rule of thumb. With modern modeling, material analysis, and testing methods you can run the material development cycle much faster if you’re willing to resource the costs.
 
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