AVIC Determined to Develop Domestic Engines for Planes

choi

Bradley Perrett, Five-Year Power Plan; Avic's No 1 ambition is to end China's reliance on Russian engines. Aviation Week, Apr 23/30, 2012.

Quote:

"The group has set a budget of 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) for aero-engine work over five years, though that figure is probably only a fraction of actual expending.

About 10 engines are planned, including WS-10 Taihang, WS-13, WS-15 and "CJ-1000 Changjiang turbofan of about 30,000 lb thrust for the Comac C919 airliner. * * * But since Chinese industry as a whole has little experience in developing its own serviceable engine, it seems unlikely to have enough staff to work on about 10 at once.

"The CJ-1000 program may be a particular threat to military programs 9such as WS-10, -13 and -15], because it has tremendously challenging aim of fielding an engine competitive with the latest Western commercial turbofans. While building a military engine may be difficult, a commercial one will be even harder: whereas a combat-aircraft engine may be only moderately reliable and not very fuel-efficient yet still useful, such shortcomings make a powerplant unsalable in the commercial world.

"China's failure to develop advanced aircraft engines contrasts markedly with its success in rocket propulsion, a field with a similarly intimidating reputation for technical difficulty. China's new standard launch-rocket engine, for example, has largely been revealed to adopt an advanced operating cycle that delivers excellent performance quite comparable with that of Russian and Western equipment (AW&ST Mar 12, p 32).

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) AW&ST is acronym of the magazine's full title: Aviation Week and Space Technology
(c) The Mar 12 article is about rocket engines for Long March 5, 6 and 7, which are under development. China will need more power rockets (and engines) in order to conduct manned exploration of, and landing on, the moon.