The Y-20 will acquire a Chinese engine by 2018 at the earliest
By Henri Kenhmann - East Pendulum - 13 March 2017
The Chinese military transport aircraft Y-20 will soon acquire a native engine, its chief engineer said on Friday, March 10. TANG Zhanghong (唐长红), also a member of the Political Consultative Conference, is currently attending the 5th session of the 12th National People's Congress in Beijing and
revealed several details about the Y-20 program in an interview with the local media.
TANG Zhanghong (唐长红), chief engineer of the Y-20 program.
"The Y-20 is still in the operational testing phase," TANG told reporters at
Huaxi City Daily , "the first operational feedback shows that customers are very satisfied."
The first two Y-20s, registered as 11051 and 11052, were delivered to the Chinese Air Force on June 15, 2016 and were admitted to active duty a few weeks later in the 4th Transport Division based in Qionglai, Sichuan province.
This is the first time the Chinese Air Force has a locally designed 200-ton transport aircraft, with the sole "regret" that the aircraft is still equipped with a Russian
D-30KP-2 engine, for lack of the Chinese equivalent.
The chief engineer of Y-20 specifies for this the schedule of the Chinese motorization endowment: "
You will see Y-20 equipped with Chinese engine next year (2018) or the year after. Without going into further details"
A Y-20, equipped with four Russian engines, was on demonstration flight at the last Zhuhai Air Show.
Two Chinese engines under development may however correspond to the next Y-20 propulsion.
The first is the
WS-18, an unfavorable ("sinisée") version of D-30KP-2, which thus adopts a performance similar to 12,000 kgf of thrust. This engine that could eventually replace its Russian counterpart on the H-6K bomber, for example, was delivered in September 2014, but its latest status is not made public.
The second Chinese engine is the one targeted from the start by the Y-20 program, namely the WS-20 . It is a turbofan with a high dilution rate with a thrust estimated between 13,200 and 16,300 kgf, whose development would be based on the core-engine of WS-10.
It should be noted that according to Chinese sources, the WS-20 has just been dismantled from the 760 flight test bench of China Flight Test Establishment (CFTE) after a long testing campaign
started in November 2012. It should therefore continue its flight tests on a new prototype of Y-20.
In terms of timing, the WS-20 appears to be more in line with an entry into service around 2018 or 2019, as indicated by Chief Engineer TANG. It is also known that Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation, which is responsible for mass production of the engine, has been studying since 2015 the installation of a Pulse Line assembly line with the help of the North-West Polytechnic University.
The WS-18 made its first flight on a flying test bench of CFTE in September 2014.
A WS-20 mounted on a CFTE test rig.
A Y-20 model with four WS-20 engines (Photo: AVIC)
One should however expect the institutional elements, or spotter photos, to know which of the two Chinese engines will equip the Y-20 first.
To be continued.
Henri K.
Appendix: Our articles on the Y-20 program can be found
here .
but I just wanna emphasize the tweet info of the NEW model with Y-20B mounted with the WS-20 engine.
What's the benchmark?
