Why is China Struggling to Build Advanced Jet Engines?

[Jonfliesgoats]

Chinese aircraft rely on duplicated and imported engines.  Despite having access to high end commercial engines imported from the West, indigenously produced commercial engines lag in performance.  

Chinese manufacturing and metallurgy are advanced.  They should have the ability to reverse engineer and produce much better motors locally, but they haven't.  What gives?  Chinese turboprops are based on Russian designs and have shorter service lives and worse fuel efficiency than Western counterparts.

The same holds true for military aircraft.  The J20 uses older engines, although there are plans to use better motors. Still, a nation that can make the Long March 7 struggles with airplane engines.  

What is going on?

Edited January 1, 2017 by Jonfliesgoats
Spelling, autocorrect

[Scotius]

Why are you using LM - 7 as a measuring stick? It's a  fairly standard kerolox launcher - nothing revolutionary and groundbreaking about it. High - end military jet engines require significant amount of know-how to be developed and built. So far China excelled at copying (or outright stealing as was implied many times) of foreign constructions, apparently they are not yet ready to make a leap to their own, fully matured engines.

[pincushionman]

Because a big part of manufacturing these kinds of things successfully is in the manufacturing techniques, which are harder to steal because they aren't just drawings and documents? There's this prevalent attitude in management that documenting everything about what you do automatically makes you more successful as a company, but the reality is in successful companies there's still a huge ammount of tribal knowledge that can only be passed on by experience.

[YNM]

Maybe because of the way these things are created : it's not enough just taking the general form, they also have to take the formation process and material quality etc. ?

Edited January 1, 2017 by YNM

[Jonfliesgoats]

@Scotius

I use the LM7 as an example of general technical achievement.  Admittedly, it is not the best comparison.

 

@pincushionman

I noticed the dependence on tribal knowledge in one of my past lives fielding new equipment.  That experience left me with a different hypothesis regarding Chinese struggles to build engines, though.  Perhaps their organizational structure and corporate culture is a hindrance?  Your suggestion bears some more merit than mine, though.  

 

[kerbiloid]

Not "steal", but "creative reproduction".

[Elthy]

2 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

corporate culture

I would suspect the reason is similar. Such military projects propably arent assigned to the most competitive company, politics or corruption could be a huge factor. I would suspect those companys are even fully state owned, meaning they dont have to work efficently.

Also dont forget ideology: If you want to work in good positions for the government you propably have to be a party member and be very loyal, which both conflicts with a critical/free mind which is often an important factor for technological advancement.

[Shpaget]

Just because they have access to the final product, it doesn't mean they know how to reproduce it. Sure, they can mimic the shape, but the material properties are a whole lot harder to reproduce, even if they know the composition.

Just take steel for example, heating and cooling regimes play a major part in its production, yet are not obvious in the final product.

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, Elthy said:

I would suspect those companys are even fully state owned, meaning they dont have to work efficently.

The cosplayed Soviet engines have been created by 100% state owned companies.

8 hours ago, Elthy said:

Also dont forget ideology: If you want to work in good positions for the government you propably have to be a party member and be very loyal

Which is absolutely opposite to what they want from you in B-ing or L-heed tops.

Edited January 2, 2017 by kerbiloid

[MaxL_1023]

They may have installed the wrong version of "Advanced Jet Engine" - Nathankell might be able to help them with that.

 

[mrfox]

Remember China only began limited industrialization in the 1950s, and widescale industrialization since the 1980s. I'd say its done a pretty impressive job in such a short timeframe.

[KSK]

16 hours ago, Elthy said:

I would suspect the reason is similar. Such military projects propably arent assigned to the most competitive company, politics or corruption could be a huge factor. I would suspect those companys are even fully state owned, meaning they dont have to work efficently.

Also dont forget ideology: If you want to work in good positions for the government you propably have to be a party member and be very loyal, which both conflicts with a critical/free mind which is often an important factor for technological advancement.

I don't see the conflict between loyalty and critical / free thinking I'm afraid. Using a Space Race example, loyalty and party membership clearly weren't an obstacle to Soviet advancement in space technology. And presumably the vast majority of people working on the US space program (and all the technologies required for it) were loyal US citizens?

[Elthy]

Im not talking about "i better do what my boss says or i get fired" or even "this is for the greater good" style loyalty, but "all hail the holy mango" style. Seriosly, look up "mao mango" if you want a story that sounds like a fairy tale...

[pincushionman]

Part of my comment didn't emphasize enough that China will get better at building jet engines by building more jet engines. Just like the rest of the engine makers.

[Jonfliesgoats]

The Mao Mango thing is actually true and hilarious.  That said, I can say from personal experience that there is a similar defacto ideology test to promote within Western defense and aerospace companies.  So Inma not sure if we really have an advantage here.

When I was an undergraduate I was a member of a small, socialist organization for a few months.  I figured that the only way to develop an informed political identity was to get involved with groups and really evaluate them before I committed.  I rapidly realized that the group I was associated with was all about ultimate frisbee and had little to do with any real facts or action.  Instead, I became a true believer in the liberal order established by the US in the post war years.  I kept flying, studying, working and being an adventurous weirdo.  Ten years later, I was in the field, working with a recently developed system, flying and demonstrating it to our customer.  I had already passed all official background checks and had been read-in to specific programs.  Somehow it came to light that I was a member of this socialist group (I suspect from a newsletter mailing list that I was on).  One day, one of our customer's representatives started asking me some casual, but clearly pointed questions about my political affiliations.  Perhaps naively, I answered them honestly.  The next day I removed from the camp, removed from the program I had worked so hard to develop and subject to additional, immediate screening.  By law, political leanings cannot affect your access to security clearances, but law and reality are not always the same thing.  Had I been in a similar position in the Soviet or Chinese Air Forces, I simply would have disappeared.  

Luckily, two weeks later I was back at work, and all was done.  Still, from there on in, I never shared any political views or even commented on popular comedians.  I was as skeptical of people working with me on our program as I was of people from foreign organizations.  Conversation at DFACs, at work or even traveling to and from worksites was something that was a genuine risk to me and my family.  Now that my years of high adventure are behind me, I wonder if my urge to talk anonymously on here is somehow related to that period of paranoid silence and effort.  That is a question for another audience, however.

My long-winded point is that there are ideology and political tests in the West.  We just don't have them formalized an supported by uniformed, political officers.  Still, if you want to work at Lockheed, Boeing or Brand X, you better not become a member of the International Socialist Organization in college.  That may cost you a promotion or a job in sensitive programs.  I got lucky.  Also the ISO isn't what it claims to be.

What can I say?  I was extremely naive.

[Nothalogh]

Remember, it took the USSR to the 1980s to build a good turbofan.

Consider the hideous creation that was the MiG-25, its airframe, engines, and operational capability

[p1t1o]

If I had to guess, I'd say it has to do with the replication of high-temperature materials such as advanced alloys, ceramics (and ceramic coatings) and composites. The advancement of high-temperature materials is one of the biggest factors in the increase in jet engine performance over recent decades and is largely what limits them even now. I would also imagine that they are non-trivial to merely copy, much research may have to be replicated as well.

[PB666]

On 1/1/2017 at 3:52 AM, Jonfliesgoats said:

Chinese aircraft rely on duplicated and imported engines.  Despite having access to high end commercial engines imported from the West, indigenously produced commercial engines lag in performance.  

Chinese manufacturing and metallurgy are advanced.  They should have the ability to reverse engineer and produce much better motors locally, but they haven't.  What gives?  Chinese turboprops are based on Russian designs and have shorter service lives and worse fuel efficiency than Western counterparts.

The same holds true for military aircraft.  The J20 uses older engines, although there are plans to use better motors. Still, a nation that can make the Long March 7 struggles with airplane engines.  

What is going on?

Well the older jet engines are low tech, but also have less hackable electronics. The new flight systems on US aircraft require high tech electronics that can be hacked by countries. Now if you are a country that goes out of your way to hack other countries and steal their state secrets (particularly their high tech planes), do you think that the US probably has a program to detect said use and allow combat disabling. The other thing is that if you hack into someone company and steal their advance AC design and they (or their purchasers) suspect that you are going to do this they might just lay decoy designs around that you will waste years investigating before you realized you were duped.

Aside from that the two fantastic high tech planes from US, F22 and F35. . .. .how exactly are they doing? (too expensive to operate). The F22 requires something like a day of hanger time for each hour of flight time. The F35 has run into problem after problem.

 

[PB666]

On 1/3/2017 at 5:22 AM, p1t1o said:

If I had to guess, I'd say it has to do with the replication of high-temperature materials such as advanced alloys, ceramics (and ceramic coatings) and composites. The advancement of high-temperature materials is one of the biggest factors in the increase in jet engine performance over recent decades and is largely what limits them even now. I would also imagine that they are non-trivial to merely copy, much research may have to be replicated as well.

F22 high cost of maintenace is due to the amount of man hours that need to be spent resurfacing the slealth materials that coat the high flectivity parts of the craft. F35 has similar problems.

[mikegarrison]

Back in the day, the USA decided that it was not good policy to be dependent on a single manufacturer for all their engines. So they forced GE to allow Pratt to manufacture GE's F404 engine. GE was required to give Pratt all the blueprints to the engine, which they did.

Long story short, it was a disaster for everybody. GE lost sales. It probably cost Pratt more money to try to build the GE engine than they got from selling it to the government. And the Navy found out that even though both engines were built to the exact same design, they were not identical. Spare parts that worked on the GE-built engines didn't work on the Pratt-built engines and vice versa. They ended up having to store more spares because they had to have sets of spares for each.

Anyway, the point is that even experienced engine-builders working from the same blueprints can't build interchangeable engines. So these things aren't as easy to just copy as you might expect.

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, PB666 said:

The new flight systems on US aircraft require high tech electronics that can be hacked by countries. Now if you are a country that goes out of your way to hack other countries and steal their state secrets (particularly their high tech planes), do you think that the US probably has a program to detect said use and allow combat disabling

The same story was with Su-27, unlikely its engine had any cryptoelectronics.
So, afaik, they have cosplayed Tu-16, MiG-19, MiG-21 and early Su-27 with underpowered engines.

[mrfox]

http://m.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2060544/made-china-triumph-china-declares-it-can-make-ball-pen-head

Even something as simple as the metallurgy of a pen tip requires years of effort and research when you are starting from scratch.

[Kryten]

 The Indians have also so far failed in their attempt to produce a modern jet suitable for a fighter; despite working on it for over a decade now, pumping in half a billion dollars in funding, and multiple tech transfer agreements with western engine firms like SNECMA. It's simply a very hard thing to do.

[DerekL1963]

58 minutes ago, Kryten said:

 The Indians have also so far failed in their attempt to produce a modern jet suitable for a fighter; despite working on it for over a decade now, pumping in half a billion dollars in funding, and multiple tech transfer agreements with western engine firms like SNECMA. It's simply a very hard thing to do.

Yep.  Technology in Real Life doesn't work like it does in the movies...  It's not one-and-done.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

While we the Kerbals are manufacturing anything we want, from rovers to starships, on the Mun surface, from pure regolith, in a plant occupying several trailers, powered with solar panels and RTG.

They would just use USI and Extraplanetary Launchpads

 

Edited January 17, 2017 by kerbiloid