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Why jet engines aren't made in China

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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#121

Post by rvba »

csomar wrote: post #108
shalmanese wrote: post #74

The more parsimonious explanation is that commercial jet engine production is downstream of commercial airbody production and China's currently limited by COMAC's scaling woes. All the money and talent in the world can't replicate real users generating real data that you can use to improve. I'd argue the opposite that jet engines have a market structure that's uniquely terrible for traditional free market societies.…

> All the money and talent in the world can't replicate real users generating real data that you can use to improve Basically, China excellence in EVs and Solar was driven by the market being new. It's hard (almost impossible?) to outrank an incumbent very entrenched in a big market. You need a paradigm shift (ie: iphone vs nokia) to make the change.

Or good spies who steal the secrets + few years of subsidies to give runway for the new companies

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#122

Post by rbanffy »

ifwinterco wrote: post #90
FooBarWidget wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What from I understand the issue is mainly service frequency rather than fuel efficiency. Also, the domestic commercial jet market is still sizable, so excluding the domestic market from analyses is kinda weird. Finally, lots of countries are spooked by arbitrary US sanctions and want to diversify.

Yes I think eventually they will catch up because the Chinese domestic market is big enough to give them a market while they iterate. With petrol/diesel engines they just gave up and went straight to electric, but there's no viable alternative to jet engines for planes, so they'll put in the work (plus the military incentive running in parallel)

> no viable alternative to jet engines for planes

No, but regional aviation can be well served by electrification - a jet engine needs to run at a speed it pushed enough air through itself to propel the plane forward, but a turbine feeding a generator that powers a couple electric motors can run at a far more forgiving regime.

As pointed out elsewhere, all it might take is a paradigm shift to unseat the current incumbents.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#123

Post by lenkite »

> The USSR, now Russia, entered in the 1950s, when the technology was still new and the Western advantage was much smaller, and they still, over their entire history, did not produce a civil or military engine that had parity with West.

Interesting reading. Sadly, once I encountered this, I realized the article was extremely biased. The USSR successfully achieved this several times.

I suspect this article will age badly after WS-15 goes live. China has significantly narrowed the gap.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#124

Post by russli1993 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24
ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

Material engineering is the well known blocker for China, same with semiconductors. They basically have to replicate 50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west. China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same t…

CJ1000A is being certified by 2028. It is equivalent to LEAP engines on fuel burn. WS15 and WS19 are all shipping today and have thrust to weight ratio above 10. CJ2000 is a 35-ton trust, genx fuel burn class engine, on track for 2030.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#125

Post by russli1993 »

HardCodedBias wrote: post #25

A lot of claims in the article. IDK if the WS-15 failed or is "two decades" behind. I think we just don't know, but we do know that it is that they have achieved the ability to deliver, in mass, third-generation single-crystal nickel-based superalloys. That's a strong proof point. As for commercial, China can/has grant a sizable portion of the C919 to domestic engine producers ( I think AECC has this contract ) that…

WS 15 is already shipping with latest J20, its trust to weight ratio is above 10.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#126

Post by russli1993 »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #116

another reason why China can't build jet engines: the jet engine manufacturers never relocated their manufacturing to China, which therefore prevented the Chinese from getting their hands on their IP. it's well known that the way China dominated in solar panels was by "transferring" (aka stealing) the IP from US solar panel makers who had foolishly set up shop in China to reduce costs, and ended up going out of busin…

Chinese solar technology is multiple generations ahead of US companies. First solar panels have a conversion rate of 17% while longi is 24.8% and demonstrating 26%. First solar should be out of the market without US government subsidies and protectionism.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#127

Post by inglor_cz »

dingaling wrote: post #94
OneDonOne wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the pen, it is the pen tip . Ballpoint pen tips are microscopic tungsten carbide ball held inside ultra-thin steel sockets. So you need cutting tolerances precise to 0.001 millimeters. If the socket is a fraction of a micron too loose, the ink leaks. Too tight, and the pen won't write. Source from al-Arabiya: https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2017/01/14/At-last-Chi... The point (no pun intended) is that…

The ballpoint pen was invented in 1938. It doesn't rely on any arcane manufacturing technology.

I am 47 and ballpoint pens have visibly improved since the 1990s, at least the cheap ones (never had an expensive one). The risk of accidental staining is by now basically zero, it used to be high enough that you avoided putting a pen into your shirt pocket even for an hour.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#128

Post by bruce511 »

shykes wrote: post #104
tzs wrote: post #76

> It may be surprising, then, that in jet engines, China remains at least a full decade behind the West Do they need to be at the same level as the West? For civilian aircraft a decade or two behind seems like it would be good enough. For military aircraft that could be a significant disadvantage, but from what the net is telling me they have excellent air defenses so it seems unlikely someone with superior planes is…

> they have excellent air defenses so it seems unlikely someone with superior planes is going to be able to go in and bomb them into submission . You seem to believe that China's military ambitions are purely defensive, but that is not the case. They have grandiose expansionist ambitions which include basically the entire South China Sea - which in spite of its name is shared by many countries. Not to mention their e…

But interestingly their ambitions are "local". This has a large impact on the machines and materials required.

In other words, let's says the Chinese military jet engine is 15 years behind is say fuel economy. Which reduces range. If the conflict is local that doesn't matter overmuch.

Equally operating from land, not carriers, reduces reach, but if what you want to reach is local then that doesn't matter.

If China has military ambitions (and despite the sabre rattling there's no overt indication of that), they are all in a specific area.

By contrast the US likes to participate in, or instigate, actions far from home. Moving planes means long open-ocean ferry flights. Single-engine reliability, range, effeciency and so on is paramout.

Equally the US relies on friendly local countries to provide support bases, logistics, fuel and so on. As evidenced just this year, that support can be withdrawn. Will Japan or Korea want to be dragged into a US / China conflict over Taiwan?

So if the Chinese are operating engines later than the first gulf War, and on par with the second, I'm not sure that's a defining difference.

The US doctrine of air-defence suppression followed by air superiority may not be possible in a space near the Chinese mainland.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#129

Post by inglor_cz »

bluGill wrote: post #46
eth0up wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is that they produce a lot of engineers, while the US produces a lot gender studies majors. I rarely say it, but I do not foresee much that they won't be leaving us sharply behind on soon, other than poverty and homelessness, which we have pretty well covered.

There are about as many gender study majors in the U.S. per year as there are aviation engineering majors. That is one small niche of engineering majors that includes all of gender study.

That's actually pretty bad. The rest of the world is very willing to spend money on American aerospace products and services.

Is it willing to buy gender theory from you for similar amounts of money? If not, the production of specialized majors should not be 1:1.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#130

Post by torginus »

ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

It seems the author started from a desiserd conclusion, and strung together fact(oid)s to support it without any understanding of them, sometimes making huge mistakes.

For example the monocrystalline blades, which are touted as some holy grain, were in production engines on both sides of the iron curtain by the 70s. China has mastered this technology by the 2010s at the latest.

As for airliner engines, I looked up both the LEAP and the PW1000 and their 'hot' part - the turbines - have fairly conservative specs, roughly on par with these aforementioned 70s US/Soviet fighter engines. This is the technology tha's more or less shared between military and civilian engines.

The big Western advantage comes from manufacturing the bypass fan - the composite blades and the high-speed gearbox connecting them to the jet 'core' are technologies that the West has a huge lead on and that's why the reason comparable Russian and Chinese engines don't exist.

But strictly speaking, that's not really directly related to the tech in the turbine 'cores' which most people refer to when speaking about jets and not a peep is made about this in the article.

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