Chapter 955 What Is the Price?

Chapter 955 So... what is the price?

A weekend passed quickly.

November 19.

Shengjing.

In a conference room of the 606th Institute.

Ian Vista, who had just got off the plane, sat at the conference table, waiting for the meeting to begin with a serious face.

Although he was deliberately hiding it, he could still see obvious fatigue between his eyebrows.

For people of Vista's age, the two days of rest before departure were not enough to make up for the fatigue caused by working non-stop for more than half a month.

Moreover, with such a big thing in his mind, it was not a good rest at all.

In addition, the relatively closed environment in the conference room made him even want to yawn.

However, Vista knew very well that he could never devote himself to the meeting in this state -

Although it was just a routine work handover, if he was dizzy, there would definitely be problems.

He bit the tip of his tongue lightly, using the pain to make himself a little more awake.

However, this alone was obviously not enough.

Vesta turned around and looked at several technicians from Snecma.

Of course, his deputy Arthur Mondok was also included.

The latter was chatting with Bernard Shor, the technician who called Vesta a few days ago, and was obviously trying to understand the recent situation.

After hesitating for a moment, he decided to join the conversation to distract himself.

"Bernard."

As Vesta's voice sounded, the whispers around him suddenly fell silent:

"I remember you said on the phone before that you participated in their testing process throughout?"

"Well..."

Hearing this question, Shor scratched his head a little embarrassedly:

"It can't be considered as participation..."

"The cooperation between those Chinese researchers is quite skillful. We don't have many opportunities to intervene. At most, we can help debug the equipment. Most of the time... we can only be regarded as watching from the side throughout the process..."

The original intention of Snecma to send them to China was to follow the R&D process here and learn something by the way.

In fact, at the beginning, several people including Shor still felt good about themselves.

You know, they are all senior employees in the company.

Some of them even participated in the round of technical cooperation with China in the late 1980s.

Now, to be a student of a former student, the mentality is naturally different.

According to the thinking of Shore and others at the time, China should have mastered some special tricks for CFM56 by some coincidence, and it would be enough as long as they learned them.

The result...

It was just two days after the start.

Strictly speaking, after attending the technical meeting on the first night, Shore was shocked to find that he could not keep up with the other party's thinking at all.

He even asked the translator to translate the minutes of the meeting into English.

But it still didn't work.

Soon, he realized that the Chinese did not master any tricks.

It was a whole set of almost new aircraft engine design concepts.

Learn, kid!

Of course, it is impossible to learn so quickly.

So, it became the current situation.

They only had time to translate the design information provided by the Chinese and send it back to China.

As for participating in the design work throughout the process...

No one mentioned it a long time ago.

Fortunately, Vesta was also aware of the actual situation, so he didn't make it difficult for Shaw:

"Watching the whole process... is fine, you should have seen the parts they used for testing, right?"

"Of course."

Shor finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After all, if you don't know anything, it would be a bit embarrassing:

"The parts they have completed testing include all the turbine discs and turbine blades of the high and low pressure turbines. Of course, only 4 blades of the same number are produced for each type. After all, it is just a component-level test..."

He was interrupted by Vesta halfway through his words:

"A considerable part of the Chinese aviation industry standards are borrowed from us. Of course I know this process..."

And the voice of this sentence was getting smaller and smaller.

Because at the beginning, Vesta almost instinctively felt that this matter was quite face-saving.

But halfway through the words, he felt something was wrong.

Others borrowed a bunch of industry standards from you, and then turned around and surpassed you...

It doesn't seem to be something to be proud of...

"Ahem——"

Vesta had to cough twice to cover up the embarrassment, and then continued as if nothing had happened:

"I want to ask, have you paid attention to the specific design of the cooling system?"

These contents can actually be seen after getting the design plan later.

But on the one hand, Vesta is sleepy at the moment, and on the other hand, it is impossible for them to believe everything others say.

There must be some other information channels as collateral evidence, right?

"I paid attention to it."

Shor replied:

"From the technical route, it is still traditional air film cooling, and new technologies such as impingement cooling or double-wall are not used, but the internal characteristics of the air film hole are very complex, with non-standard variable cross-sections, and there is also a three-dimensional structure inside..."

"As for the design process, I..."

Vesta waved his hand at Shor:

"You guys, it's enough to get this information."

"If you didn't keep up with the design stage, you didn't keep up..."

He led a team and spent more than 20 days to thoroughly understand the technical data of the M88-2 engine. Naturally, he could not ask his subordinates for anything higher.

However, Shore shook his head:

"It's not that we didn't keep up, but..."

Here, he paused:

"It's... We didn't notice that they had a design process..."

"What?"

Vestal, who was still trying to hold back his tiredness, was no longer sleepy:

"No design process?"

"Yes."

Shore explained:

"The special-shaped air film holes they use should have been designed long ago. On the M88-3, they just slightly adjusted the arrangement of the hole positions..."

"..."

He obviously wanted to say something else.

But at this time, the door of the conference room was pushed open.

A group of Chinese representatives, led by Liu Yongquan, walked in from outside one after another.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

Liu Yongquan took the initiative to step forward and shook hands with Vesta:

"On behalf of China Aviation Power Group, I welcome the arrival of our partners!"

...

After a simple and polite greeting, the two parties, who had their own thoughts but the same goal, sat down at the two ends of the conference table.

A technical document written in two languages ​​was placed in front of each person -

Of course, it was just a brief overview.

The detailed technical documents, even if stored on a hard drive, can fill a password box the size of a schoolbag.

"Dr. Vesta."

While speaking, Liu Yongquan turned on the projector on the table:

"Next, let me give you a brief introduction to the main design content of this handover."

The representatives of Snecma across from them immediately perked up and looked at the curtain on the wall on one side of the conference room.

While no one was paying attention, Liu Yongquan took out the black leather notebook that he had prepared long ago, and spread it out in front of him under the cover of the projector host:

"According to the upgrade plan we agreed on before, the most important improvement of the M88-3 engine is the thrust envelope below 10,000 meters in altitude and 0.9 Mach in speed range..."

"..."

He first gave a brief introduction to the expected effect after the upgrade is completed, as well as the current upgrade progress, and then turned to the main topic:

"In order to optimize the thrust without increasing fuel consumption and affecting the cycle life and reliability of the aircraft engine, we have redesigned the entire hot end of the M88-3 engine, especially the fuel atomization system and the air film cooling system to obtain a higher turbine front temperature..."

"..."

While Liu Yongquan was turning the page of the PPT, Vesta finally asked the question he wanted to ask the most:

"Dr. Liu, it has been less than three months since we first finalized the upgrade route of the M88-3 engine. Can you make such a large adjustment to the hot end?"

Liu Yongquan smiled slightly after hearing this.

He had actually prepared for this question:

"First of all, during this period, we have concentrated all our technical strength on upgrading the hot end components, so the progress is relatively fast."

"After all, the SeA series engines on the Falcon Z project have to share the hot end with the M88-3. The time is tight and the task is heavy, and there is no room for delay."

"In addition, I should have mentioned before that this cooling system, especially the dustpan-shaped three-dimensional air film holes shown on the PPT now, is a mature technology that we have been researching for a long time. As long as it is slightly adapted to the M88-3 engine, it can meet the technical requirements..."

In fact, Liu Yongquan did not tell the truth completely-

The cooling system design of the M88-3 is almost completely copied from the WS-10, and there is actually no targeted adaptation...

Of course, if this is said, it will be difficult for everyone's friends to do it.

After hearing Liu Yongquan's explanation, Vesta also turned his eyes back to the curtain.

Then, his eyes widened instantly.

"This..."

Just as Shor said just now.

This air film hole design includes a gradient cross section, gradient aperture, three-dimensional structure, internal microstructure of the hole and multi-layer arrangement, which can be said to have all the five poisons.

Although the test data marked below is indeed very impressive, Vesta is a little afraid to think about how this thing can be mass-produced at that time...

But at this time, Liu Yongquan started to introduce the advantages and cooling principle of this three-dimensional special-shaped hole again, and Vesta was not easy to interrupt.

It was not until about forty minutes later that the whole introduction came to an end, and he finally got the second chance to speak:

"Liu..."

Vesta quickly stopped Liu Yongquan from opening a new PPT:

"I want to ask... According to your design, there are about 50 groups of air film holes on a single turbine blade, and the internal structure of each air film hole is so... complicated."

"Have you considered the problem of production hours?"

Liu Yongquan raised his head and stared at Vesta with a frown for a while.

Then, he let out a faint sigh.

"Alas..."

"Dr. Vesta, we used the most mature air film cooling technology with the least air flow loss. Just by optimizing the air film design, we increased the temperature before the turbine by about 110K, which is the limit of the current technology level."

"If we switch to shock cooling, we can certainly reduce the complexity of the structure, but it will increase gas loss, affecting about 3-5% of the full envelope thrust, and reliability will also be affected."

"In comparison, it only takes a few more man-hours now, which should not be an unacceptable price, right?"