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Posted on 07/15/2025 9:20:15 AM PDT by Red Badger
This development could have important effects on China’s next-generation military aviation programs.
Chinese researchers are working on a new superalloy cooling technique that could significantly improve the performance and lifespan of high-temperature turbine engine parts.
This development could have important effects on China’s next-generation military aviation programs.
According to China’s state-run Science and Technology Daily, the innovation may be a critical step toward enabling advanced jet engines, including those designed for sixth-generation fighters and future hypersonic platforms.
New superalloy cooling engines
Dalian University of Technology in northeast China is researching how superalloy turbine discs are made, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.
These discs are critical parts of a jet engine, as they support the turbine blades and must withstand high temperatures and strong forces during flight.
They are also essential for converting the thermal energy from fuel combustion into the rotational force that powers an aircraft.
By developing a method that rapidly cools the forged metal using a uniform mist of high-speed water jets, the Dalian team claims to have achieved a fourfold improvement in crystal grain size distribution and a cooling speed 3.75 times faster than conventional methods.
In one experiment, an ultra-high-temperature disc at 1,200°C (2192°F) was cooled at 673°C (1243°F) per minute, an unusual figure in China’s domestic metallurgy research.
“This level of cooling meets the demands of the new generation of aviation engines,” said project leader Shi Jinhe. “We will accelerate the application and transformation of these results.”
The announcement marks an important step in materials engineering and may help China reduce its technology gap with Western countries in engine development.
The performance of the turbine disc affects the engine’s thrust, efficiency, and lifespan. This is particularly vital for China’s sixth-generation fighter programs and hypersonic platforms with exponentially higher thermal loads.
While the report stops short of quantifying the impact on operational engine performance, Chinese defense analysts already highlight the technique’s relevance to hypersonic propulsion.
Hypersonic, stealth dominance
In turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engines, one of the most promising architectures for hypersonic flight, the turbine section must withstand extreme temperatures when transitioning to ramjet or scramjet operation.
High-performance superalloys are foundational to making such engines viable.
China has had difficulty creating reliable engines for its J-20 stealth fighter, a fifth-generation aircraft.
The WS-10 engines had limitations, and developing the stronger WS-15 engines took a long time.
It wasn’t until July 2023 that a J-20 prototype with twin WS-15 engines started flight testing. This came more than ten years after the J-20 was first introduced.
Those delays highlighted China’s “heart disease,” a conversational term in Chinese military circles referencing the nation’s inability to build world-class engines.
But with the successful deployment of the DD6 superalloy in the WS-15 and reports of an even more heat-resistant DD9 superalloy in development for future engines, China is now clearly pushing forward on multiple fronts: materials science, precision manufacturing, and propulsion design.
Beijing has designated engine technology a strategic priority under its military modernization roadmap.
If the Dalian technique can be scaled for production, it could improve turbine disc life cycles, reduce engine failure rates, and support a new class of high-thrust, thermally resilient propulsion systems, exactly what is required for hypersonic strike and sixth-generation air dominance platforms.
Whether these lab breakthroughs translate into operational capability remains to be seen. But the signal is clear: China is accelerating its engine development to catch up and compete at the edge of atmospheric flight.
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AVIATION PING!................
Nonsense. They are still copying airliners and can’t touch us in engines.
So... what the article is REALLY saying is that China is in the process of stealing cooling technology from the US. The US hasn’t finished development and testing so China is awaiting further espionage intel.
Got it.
Two years ago China made its first ball point pen ball .... many are swallowing China’s multi-billion dollar campaign to convince everyone that it is the best in every respect, besides propaganda & parades.
Wonder if there’s way to allow “bad” info to get stolen by China so that when they put their designs in production, they crap out quickly?
Well lets give them some props for what they are good at. Stealing technology from others. Especially when its made very easy by former admins reaching back to the 1990s.
Exactly. China keeps people in the U.S. patent office who do nothing but study publicly-available new patent filings, looking for ideas. This, of course, is in addition to their usual theft from their American employers and universities. As you say, if the Chinese develop something before the U.S., it’s only because they aren’t constrained by Western notions about testing, regulations, fine-tuning, etc.
Anything China makes is stolen tech.
WS-15 develop you long time.
Agitprop. They can’t even build decent, reliable jet engines for their 4th Gen fighters.
“Could possibly” and “might”; both the words the China and the MSM use to describe Chinese vaporware and non existent planes. In reality, it translates in to “Oh how we wish it were true.”
Another article that begs the question - what in the hell are our vaunted government scientific labs like Los Alamos been working on, a bunch of woke science projects?
There certainly are ways to do that sort of thing, but it must be done very carefully to be believed.
Operation Mincemeat was a fine example of how to do this sort of thing successfully.
Get it up to 30,000 ft. I think it’s -60 up there.
Muslim outreach, DEI and Get Trump.....................
I’d encourage a little different approach with China. They have over 300,000 students in OUR colleges, and they aren’t stupid. Asian IQ is averaging 105, a mere 5 points higher than average white US scores - we tend to be more creative.
But, consider the Lithium battery market, of the 2,500 lithium battery companies in the world, China owns over 2,200 of them. While the US batter makers are still trying to exceed ~350 W/kg energy density in the labs; China has 700+ W/kg in PRODUCTION for sale - last year.
When it comes to the robots that make these batteries, China owns 95+% of that market. They didn’t steal that technology, they beat our ass. They send their best over here to get their PhD’s in technology, to steal what they can (yes, we both know that happens) - then they add what they can and beat the shit out of us in the market.
Why? The US and capitalism is Risk adverse; where China’s socialism paradigm isn’t. That’s why they utterly dominate the Lithium battery market and rare earth metals market.
Bkmk
.China is in the process of stealing cooling technology from the US.
Exactly so. Chinese technology is reverse engineering, or outright theft.
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