Siheyuan: The Era of Struggle

Chapter 245 Design Requirements for New Fighter Aircraft (Subscription Request)

"Director Yang, are you planning to design an aircraft that can match the one in the documentation?"

Professor Huang, who is in charge of engine research, asked excitedly.

After hearing what Professor Huang said, the others also looked at Yang Ning expectantly.

If they could create such an epoch-making fighter jet with their own hands, they would be happy even if it meant living ten years less.

For more than half a century since the birth of the airplane, we have always been outsiders or followers. If this fighter can be successfully developed, then we will at least be able to catch up with the mainstream countries in the world in the field of aviation.

In the past few decades, we have suffered enough from the lack of air superiority, and these experts understand too well the importance of an advanced fighter to our national defense security.

"No!"

Just when everyone thought that the performance of the fighter jet in the data would be their next research target, Yang Ning unexpectedly shook his head.

"Everyone knows that our current national strength does not allow us to invest too much money in equipping a fighter jet that will soon become obsolete in today's rapidly changing aviation technology."

"What I want to tell you is that the fighter jets we will develop next will be the main force to guard our airspace in the next ten or even twenty years."

"So we can't just limit ourselves to the fighter jet in the data, but we need to look at the development trend in the next 20 years."

Next, Yang Ning told the experts present about his views on the future development direction of fighter jets.

After hearing Yang Ning's words, everyone was deeply shocked.

They all anticipated that Yang Ning was ambitious about the new fighter jet they were about to develop, but no one expected that Yang Ning's ambition would be so big.

If we want this fighter jet to still be able to compete with the world's mainstream countries in 20 years, the research difficulty will be very high.

"Of course, I am not asking us to develop a new fighter jet that will lead the world by 20 years, but when we design it, we must leave some room for improvement."

"As long as the aerodynamic layout is not outdated, we can gradually improve it based on this fighter as technology advances."

After hearing Yang Ning's words, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

As long as they are not asked to achieve everything in one go, otherwise this requirement will really stump them. After all, no one knows how technology will develop in the next 20 years.

However, when Yang Ning put forward the design requirements for the new fighter, everyone looked embarrassed.

"The double-two standard also requires the ability to achieve low-altitude high-attitude control, and the cruising speed must reach supersonic speed, with a combat radius of no less than 1500 kilometers!"

"Director Yang, if we want to meet this requirement, we must develop a new engine. Moreover, the requirements for high-temperature resistant materials for this engine are extremely high."

"No country in the world has such high-quality high-temperature resistant materials. This..."

Although Professor Huang didn't finish his words, but looking at his expression, Yang Ning knew that he thought he was imagining things or was deliberately making things difficult for him.

Seeing Professor Huang's embarrassed look,

Yang Ning understood that he had misunderstood, but fortunately he was prepared.

In the next few decades, countries around the world will develop extremely slowly in the field of high-temperature resistant materials.

The reason why their engine technology can continue to improve without any obvious breakthroughs in high-temperature resistant materials is simply that they have added high-temperature resistant coatings and heat dissipation designs to the turbine blades of the aircraft engines.

Although these specific information cannot be found on the Internet in later generations, there are still a lot of basic principles.

"It is unrealistic to achieve a major breakthrough in high-temperature resistant materials in a short period of time."

Hearing this, Professor Huang was about to say something, but Yang Ning changed the subject: "If that's the case, then why can't we work on the engine's heat dissipation and thermal insulation materials?"

After hearing this, Professor Huang already understood Yang Ning's thoughts.

Sure enough, Yang Ning took out a drawing, which was a schematic diagram of the turbofan engine of later aircraft.

When others saw the drawings Yang Ning took out, they all stood up and watched, especially Professor Huang, who wished he could draw himself in the drawings.

"The design of these small holes on the fan blades and turbine is really ingenious. This not only allows the engine to dissipate heat better, but also allows for better control of the flow of gas."

Everyone present were authoritative experts in the aviation field. They understood the design principles of the schematic diagram without Yang Ning explaining anything, and could also see the benefits of this design at a glance.

"Indeed, if there is good thermal insulation material, it will be no problem to increase the nozzle temperature by 300 to 400 degrees."

After hearing this, Professor Huang nodded repeatedly, then grabbed the drawings and returned to his seat.

He carefully put the blueprint into his briefcase, looked at the experts around him with a wary look and said, "This is the engine information. It's my business. Don't even think about snatching it away."

Although this is just a rough schematic diagram and does not contain any detailed data or component data, the design concept on the drawing is still very helpful for his subsequent research.

In fact, this is the case throughout this period. The technology has been accumulated enough for many things, and the production conditions are also in place. All that’s left is for someone to break through the last layer of membrane.

Just like the design concept of turbine hole heat dissipation technology and thermal insulation coating, if Yang Ning had not exposed his nonsense, the Eagle Sauce would have thought of such a design in the early 60s.

Yang Ning only brought this design forward three or four years, but our current high-end industrial technology is no worse than that of the United States.

Especially after the advent of integrated circuits, the processing accuracy of our CNC machining centers is far ahead of that of the United States.

Combined with our world-leading computing power, we have met the production requirements of this engine.

The schematic diagram has been given, and now it depends on Professor Huang and his research group to design the experiment step by step.

Then, Yang Ning took out a few more drawings, and the others could tell at a glance that this was a three-dimensional drawing of the airplane.

If someone in the future saw this drawing, wouldn't they be able to recognize at a glance that this is the Su-27?
That’s right, after much consideration, Yang Ning finally felt that the big brother’s Su-27 had a higher cost-performance ratio, so he just bought it.

Anyway, the big brother's Su-27 was not designed until ten years later, so it can't be considered as plagiarism if Yang Ning takes it out now!
Besides, this fighter jet can become the master version of the J-11 in the future, so it must have certain advantages.

As the model used by the big brother to fight against the Eagle Sauce F15, once this fighter is developed, it only needs some repairs in the future and it will still be useful even after or years.

In addition to the three-dimensional schematic diagram, Yang Ning also incorporated the Arrow fighter's fly-by-wire control system and the design of keeping the hands on the stick.

As soon as the schematic diagram was taken out, all the experts present widened their eyes.

There were bursts of exclamations, because this fighter is so beautiful, and it is also completely different from the current mainstream straight fuselage design. From the schematic diagram, this fighter adopts wing-body fusion technology, a cantilevered mid-wing, a smooth curved wing with a forward-extending wing root, and a normal double vertical tail layout.

The wedge-shaped air inlet is located at the front and lower part of the wing-body fusion and has excellent aerodynamic performance. There are grid-type auxiliary doors at the bottom and side walls of the air inlet to prevent the inhalation of foreign objects during takeoff and landing.

The slightly drooping nose makes this fighter jet look even more domineering and murderous.

Moreover, judging from the weapon attachment points of this fighter, missiles are definitely its main combat weapon, and it only carries a cannon as a close-combat weapon, which has subverted the experts' understanding of air combat.

"Captain Yang, isn't it too extreme to only have one aircraft gun?"

Professor Zhang, who was in charge of the weapons research for this fighter jet, asked a little unhappily after seeing the schematic diagram.

After all, he could never have imagined that the fighter designed by Yang Ning only needed one cannon, which made it difficult for the more traditional Professor Zhang to accept.

Hearing this, Yang Ning could only patiently explain: "Professor Zhang, last year's airborne missiles had already shot down a target, right? And we paid the price of an ace pilot for this."

“Isn’t this a lesson we can learn?”

"We can't just carry one cannon. If an enemy plane gets close, one cannon won't be able to protect our plane at all." Professor Zhang said convincedly.

Yang Ning did not answer his question directly. Instead, he asked Professor Han, who was in charge of researching airborne radars: "Professor Han, with our current technology, what is the maximum detection range and fire control range of airborne radars?"

Professor Han thought for a moment and said, "If integrated circuits are used, the maximum detection distance can only reach 60 kilometers, considering the size limitation of airborne radar. As for the fire control distance, it depends on the guidance capability of the airborne missiles."

Then Yang Ning took out another drawing.

"This is a new generation of air-to-air missile that Mr. Guo and his team have developed over the past two years. Let's take a look."

That’s right, what Yang Ning took out was the schematic diagram that Mr. Guo had produced a few years ago based on Yang Ning’s unexpected idea, and the PL-3 air-to-air missile that he had just completed designing some time ago.

Our current industrial and material technology is much better than that in the 60s. The PL-3 air-to-air missile developed by the team led by Mr. Guo has a maximum range of 26 kilometers.

And because our electronic technology is still in the leading position, the control system of this missile is much more advanced than the historical PL-3.

Combined with infrared guidance technology, it can accurately hit the target within the maximum range, and its maximum speed reaches Mach 3.4, which is enough to threaten all current mainstream fighter jets.

Even if Big Brother and Eagle Sauce's double triple fighter jets come out later, we still have air defense missiles.

With an operating altitude of over 3.4 meters, a speed of Mach 26, a maximum range of kilometers, and the bomb load capacity of the ten attachment points of the fighter jet shown in the schematic diagram provided by Yang Ning, just imagine which fighter jet can get close?

"Has this missile been manufactured?" Professor Zhang looked at the performance parameters of the missile in his hand and finally accepted the reality.

"The test missile has been manufactured in Hongdu and launched from the J-6. All the data have reached this number."

Well, now that the test missile has come out and has been successfully tested, everyone has accepted this design.

Now that we have the overall schematic diagram and design requirements, the next step is to get down to work.

"Professor Huang, do you think we can develop a twin-rotor turbofan engine?"

After the meeting, the people from the engine research group gathered around Professor Huang and asked worriedly.

After all, whether it is a turbofan engine or a twin-rotor engine, these are areas that we have not yet touched upon.

Even the J-7 fighter jet, which has already entered the stage of test flight preparation, still uses a single-rotor turbojet engine.

It is no wonder that they have such concerns when they are forced to suddenly enter the research of twin-rotor turbofan engines.

Everyone knows that turbofan engines are fuel-efficient and have high thrust, but this has been studied before.

"Look at how useless you are!" Professor Huang glanced at the people in the engine research group and said unhappily, "We had nothing back then, but now we have developed to the point where we are not much worse than Big Brother and Eagle Sauce."

"Since our current conditions are no worse than those of Big Brother and Eagle Sauce, why can they have it but we can't?"

Then Professor Huang waved his hand and said loudly: "Okay, stop talking nonsense and get to work!"

At the same time, in the materials research group, Professor Zhu hesitated for a long time with the information in his hand. Finally, he gritted his teeth and turned to go to Yang Ning's office.

"Director Yang, I don't seem to be needed for the engine's high-temperature resistant materials. If it's just a heat-insulating coating, I'm sure any expert in the field of materials can do it. I'm afraid you asked me to come here mainly to let me study the fuselage skin, right?"

As soon as he saw Yang Ning, Professor Zhu asked directly.

"really!"

Yang Ning did not hide anything and directly admitted: "It is difficult to produce results in high temperature resistant materials in a short period of time, and the heat dissipation technology is the responsibility of the engine research group. The thermal insulation coating is mainly to overcome the problem of processing technology. It is not difficult to research thermal insulation materials."

"But for the fuselage skin, because we need to ensure the aircraft's range and power, we use lightweight high-strength skin materials."

"I'm going to trouble Professor Zhu for these!"

After hearing what Yang Ning said, Professor Zhu looked embarrassed: "This material..."

"Director Yang, can you give me some tips or research directions?"

Yang Ning didn't want to embarrass him, so he simply pointed it out directly: "Professor Zhu, have you ever considered honeycomb interlayer?"

"Honeycomb sandwich?"

"Yes, it's the honeycomb sandwich!" Yang Ning nodded affirmatively.

"The honeycomb sandwich technology is to use a double-layer sandwich design for the fuselage skin, with a layer of lightweight high-strength material in the middle."

"This will not only reduce the weight of the fuselage, but also save production costs."

Yang Ning patiently explained that after all, most of the current fuselage skins are made of aluminum alloy and titanium alloy.

We have both of these materials, but due to production reasons, they are mainly used in missiles.

If Yang Ning wants to produce more fighter jets in the future with limited materials, he can only rack his brains to save production costs.

(End of this chapter)