Proposal: Ceramic coatings/replacement for JF-17 engine blades

[CriticalThought]

The engine does not come to you in parts it is a manufactured product. You can suggest changes but the Final say lies with the Russians over what tthey will agree with or noyt. Even if they agree with the prospect they will charge you for R&D and at the end retain the facilitiesfor their own benefit so the prospect of you gaining form it are minimal. Secondly if they decided to milk you for 2-300 million dollars as R&D how will you pay?. You have been negotiating with the Red Bear for local over haul and so far this has not happened, so how do you propose to apply this coating even if you had one. WHAT WOULD IT DO TO THE MANUFACTUREERS WARRANTY?As soon as they hear you have been tinkering with the turbine blades they will withdraw all warranties. So your ideas are immature in their thought process in many ways which I have pointed out.
The only way in which you can progress is to work on dual use turbines for commercialuse and from there move into smaller Turbofans and then larger ones.
A

A lot of presumptions in what you have written and a lot of ignoring what I have stated. I have already acknowledged this is an area of research. And I have already stated that I envisage Pakistan doing this independently of Russian assistance. I see this as a very valuable discussion because I learnt from seniors about the corruption that is holding us back, but also about the wonderful progress we are making for Cruise Missiles. It fills me with hope and also saddens me a bit. And it makes me feel that we can achieve this if we want.

I find your concerns are unwarranted, and your perception of my intention is flawed.

For everyone's sake, this thread is about the ACM Sohail Aman's vision for our gen 5 fighter, and what we can start doing today that will increase our knowledgebase and expertise.

 

[Blue Marlin]

Yes. Second question, i am not with Nescom. Technological evolution continues. Priority should be for dual purpose turbine developmnt facility, which we are lacking. I have noted, when it comes to energy and high output turbine projects in pakistan, criminal negligence exist in federal bureaucracy (very likely they are on payrolls, most retire and like to settle in canada). They are worse offenders 100 X NS and madari.

any more info on the dual purpose turbine development. is the project active?
wont it be easier to work with turkey as they are building their own helicopter engines and their own chopper?

what do they do in canada?
pwc does not have much business in pakistan, right?

or is it just a thing that the corrupt like to be cold?

 

[Hassan Guy]

If WS-13 is given the green light that will be huge,

Pakistan could jointly produce and manufacture them under the JF-17 programme.

 

[CriticalThought]

The only way in which you can progress is to work on dual use turbines for commercialuse and from there move into smaller Turbofans and then larger ones.
A

There is lot of elements that go into manufacturing of a jet engine.

1. There is the low level knowledge of materials.

2. There is the knowledge of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics.

3. There is expertise in electro-mechanical engineering involved.

4. But, most importantly, there is a large scale industrial infrastructure involved.

If you think about it, you find two distinct levels of expertise: a bottom-up expertise of fundamentals, and a top-down infrastructure needed for industrialization.

If you have never made a jet engine, you want to gain expertise in its MRO. That creates the general industrial infrastructure to work at large scale. Then, slowly, you simply keep identifying areas where you can't tinker with the engine, and increasing your expertise, until you encompass the whole engine. An excellent example is the French deal for electrical harnesses one engine hot areas. It will give us the knowledge of materials to be used for such areas, and how to fabricate parts out of them. Now imagine you got similar help from France on engine blades. You pair this up with some low level research on entirely new materials for the blades, or additional coatings for them. This is how, progressively, you can keep increasing your expertise.

In general, I am a proponent of the top-down + bottom-up approach.

any more info on the dual purpose turbine development. is the project active?
wont it be easier to work with turkey as they are building their own helicopter engines and their own chopper?

what do they do in canada?
pwc does not have much business in pakistan, right?

or is it just a thing that the corrupt like to be cold?

Turkey is in the enviable position of being a part of NATO. I am guessing there would be limits on technology transfer. That is why we have to take matters in our own hands and find out own path to success, just like many other fields.

 

[HannibalBarca]

If WS-13 is given the green light that will be huge,

Pakistan could jointly produce and manufacture them under the JF-17 programme.

Do you think it's easy... Do you think pakistan has the infrastructure and the industry to do so... Even turkey is struggling in it...
...
...
...

 

[Hassan Guy]

Do you think it's easy... Do you think pakistan has the infrastructure and the industry to do so... Even turkey is struggling in it...
...
...
...

If WS-13 is given the green light that will be huge,

Pakistan could jointly produce and manufacture them under the JF-17 programme.

 

[HannibalBarca]

yes... even jointly. what do you think turkey does? a full engine? Tukey does parts of it then assemble them and still struggling, since you need a lot of investment and high tech machinery and minds to operate them...

 

[Hassan Guy]

yes... even jointly. what do you think turkey does? a full engine? Tukey does parts of it then assemble them and still struggling, since you need a lot of investment and high tech machinery and minds to operate them...

Its not the same thing.

 

[CriticalThought]

A good intro book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1856174956/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

 

[messiach]

Not now. Time has moved. Now its a joint venture.
No turkey.

any more info on the dual purpose turbine development. is the project active?
wont it be easier to work with turkey as they are building their own helicopter engines and their own chopper?

Corrupt have no nationalities, they go where the money goes.

what do they do in canada?
pwc does not have much business in pakistan, right?

or is it just a thing that the corrupt like to be cold?

 

[DesiWarrior]

O bhai mery we will get chinese assistance when need be in developing a jet engine and we can get chinese or ukranian help in developing tank engines, maybe with how things are shaping up in the geopolitical arena, somwhere down the road we can even get russian assistance, but american and british companies will never share their engine tech with pakistan, not a chance even if hell freezes over, get it.

I agree with your comments.

 

[PakEye]

Innocent question: Is our MRO infrastructure for RD-93 capable enough that we could independently replace engine blades with ceramic ones? Obviously this presumes availability of such ceramics on the first place.

Thus could have multiple advantages in weight reduction, which leads to better maneuverability, higher top speed, and maybe even reduction of radar and heat signature. Thoughts?

and what about Russians are they allowed to modifications in their tech ???

 

[CriticalThought]

and what about Russians are they allowed to modifications in their tech ???

Haha we go out and grab what we want.

Just kidding not sure but what I do know is you are allowed to reverse engineer in order to

1. Get your product to interoperate with another due to lack of docs.

2. Improve the product.

 

[m52k85]

OK. PC1 are archived with the federal archives of 04-05 in Isl. Some parts should be accessible after ten years.
Initial estimated cost was 25 mil USD. It was thought out as a collaboration with NDC-Nescom. One of the objectives were to develop dual purpose (civil and mil) turbines of various categories. Another aim was to develop fab-tech backbone - as a collaborative work under Nescom. It was dropped, one objection was the complexity of the project, lack of short term benefits, Nescom overstretched resources & issues with overlap.

@messiach
Was going through some of your older posts..

$25mn is small buck for a project of strategic nature. These days kids in Pakistan get a couple of millions from angle investors. Do you see potential for private sector to get this going, can some short term returns/ goals/ targets be identified for them and the risks of getting returns (for them) quantified?

I understand that today the 25 would be 50 or 70 but is still within reach of even medium level private players. 20% equity a handful of partners, I mean investment availability wise, why not. The question is can a subject matter expert like your self give visibility on returns?

 

[BATMAN]

Well, I do agree with you, since if even just those highly sophisticated parts are made, there is a potential of making tons of money with them in the future while continuing R&D on other parts till the whole project aim is achieved..
Also, high tech will bring high tech ToT, if you share it with your partners they will also share, Thus the project time can be shortened..

Ceramics and composites aside, i think Saudi Arabia should start R&D center of turbines & rotating machines.

Innocent question: Is our MRO infrastructure for RD-93 capable enough that we could independently replace engine blades with ceramic ones? Obviously this presumes availability of such ceramics on the first place.

Thus could have multiple advantages in weight reduction, which leads to better maneuverability, higher top speed, and maybe even reduction of radar and heat signature. Thoughts?

Changing the blades of a turbine is normal routine work, and can be done in purpose built workshops.
Pakistan can easily do it, with little investment.

To change the engine blades is one issue and to have advance knowledge of ceramic materials and skills of manufacturing /application are 2 different issues.

On ceramic subject, i remember reading that their are experiments being made of spraying ceramic materials at the edges of turbine blades to add to it's life.

I hope you know that the hottest area of a jet engine is the turbine, which is located after the combustion chamber, from where the flu gases discharge with high pressure.
What about the rest of the design?
To have more thrust, more stronger combustion and more compression of air is required, which involves fuel innovation and compressor design update.
As you see it's a matter of overall design, however, there's always a small margin of improving stuff independently, in order to have higher efficiency and longer operational life.