Contemporary Russian aircraft jet engines

[and]

How contemporary Russian engines for civil and transport aircrafts PS-90A1 and PD-14 are compared to similar engines from GE, PW, Rolls Royce and CFM International?

How many years/generations they are behind their counterparts from aforementioned companies ? In what exactly they are behind?

[stealthflanker]

The only thing "behind" is that they don't really have wide customer base. Other than that these engines serves their purpose well and their SFC is comparable with western engine.

[zero-one]

The only thing "behind" is that they don't really have wide customer base. Other than that these engines serves their purpose well and their SFC is comparable with western engine.

Could you provide us a link to these SFC figures. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am sincearly curious.
Also, its not just SFC. If you look at the most advanced engines on both sides, the disparity is clear.
The most advanced engine the U.S. has is in service is the PW F-135 while the Russians have the AL-41F1 (117).

The static uninstalled thrust levels of the F135 is 43,000 lbs of thrust while demonstrating a lifespan of more than 11,000 hrs.
Read here: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=m ... 44cf02fb30

While the AL-41 has a static uninstalled thrust level of 33,000 lbs of thrust max with a lifespan of 4000 hrs.
http://www.leteckemotory.cz/motory/al-41/index.php?en=

This means that they are actually tuning up the thrust levels just to stay competitive to their American counterparts in exchange for lifespan

[milosh]

Al-31 is 1000h lifespan and +120kN, Al-41 is 4000h and +140kN. So thrust goes up but also lifespan (a lot).

What is more interesting, Al-41 isn't new engine but upgrade of Al-31. So we can except even higher improvements with thrust&lifespan with Type 30 engine.

Commercial engines is were gap is bigger then in military ones. Gap will be smaller or closed if Chinese and Russians make joint wide body but we need to wait and see what will happen.

[stealthflanker]

Could you provide us a link to these SFC figures. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am sincearly curious.
Also, its not just SFC. If you look at the most advanced engines on both sides, the disparity is clear.
The most advanced engine the U.S. has is in service is the PW F-135 while the Russians have the AL-41F1 (117).

The static uninstalled thrust levels of the F135 is 43,000 lbs of thrust while demonstrating a lifespan of more than 11,000 hrs.
Read here: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=m ... 44cf02fb30

While the AL-41 has a static uninstalled thrust level of 33,000 lbs of thrust max with a lifespan of 4000 hrs.
http://www.leteckemotory.cz/motory/al-41/index.php?en=

This means that they are actually tuning up the thrust levels just to stay competitive to their American counterparts in exchange for lifespan

are you comparing Military or civil engine ? and i wonder why compare 117S with F-135 ? Is that engine being used on any F-15 or F-16 variants ? The F-135 currently have no real competitor, the closest one would be the R-79V300 engine which currently cancelled.

117s compares closely with the latest PW-229 or GE-F-132. TSFC figures is of course similar in range of 0.7 for typical full mil to something like 1.9 or 2 in full afterburner. Unfortunately no real data released for the 117S or the American counterpart but. You can see that there are no real gap in SFC in the older Al-31 and F-100 PW-229 engine.

Here i provide data for PW-229 and AL-31F. Notice that they have similar performance and similar SFC. Regarding lifespan, the old AL-31 basically have only like 2000 hrs of lifespan. so bringing it up to 4000 is like 2 fold improvement. and Russia have their own philosophy in making stuff. Why they made their lifespan that way.. you can give a read here :

https://www.scribd.com/doc/298950019/FI ... erspective

Now for civil engine. The old D-18T is comparable to western engines (though now the factory that make it is no longer in Russia) like CF-6. While PS-90 is making its way.

[zero-one]

What is more interesting, Al-41 isn't new engine but upgrade of Al-31. So we can except even higher improvements with thrust&lifespan with Type 30 engine

In that case, F135 isn't totally new as well but is a derivative of the F119. And even higher improvements are available with the ADVENT engine

[botsing]

I think many people make the mistake that airliner jet engines are somehow less sophisticated than jet fighter engines.

They are all optimized to perform their job in their own very specific regime:

* Fighter jet engines are optimized for high kinetic exchanges.

* Airliner jet engines are optimized for having the lowest TCO.

You cannot simply pull the F-135 out of the F-35 and drop it into a 777 and expect it to do wonders, likewise the F-35 would look rather silly with the worlds most efficient GE90 jet engine wouldn't it?

[milosh]

What is more interesting, Al-41 isn't new engine but upgrade of Al-31. So we can except even higher improvements with thrust&lifespan with Type 30 engine

In that case, F135 isn't totally new as well but is a derivative of the F119. And even higher improvements are available with the ADVENT engine

F119 is also new engine it isn't based on some older design as Al-41 is (Al-31 variant).

[zero-one]

F119 is also new engine it isn't based on some older design as Al-41 is (Al-31 variant).

well its not their fault that they already managed to move beyond the PW-F100 and GE-F110 series engines while the Russians are still stuck with the AL-31 line.

This is actually the disparity that I'm talking about. The most advanced, in service fighter engine the Russians have is an equivalent to the previous generation of American fighter engines and is actually slightly inferior as well.

[milosh]

F119 is also new engine it isn't based on some older design as Al-41 is (Al-31 variant).

well its not their fault that they already managed to move beyond the PW-F100 and GE-F110 series engines while the Russians are still stuck with the AL-31 line.

This is actually the disparity that I'm talking about. The most advanced, in service fighter engine the Russians have is an equivalent to the previous generation of American fighter engines and is actually slightly inferior as well.

Yes, they still don't have fully operational fifth gen engine so it isn't not strange Al-41 have half of F119 lifespan, but if you compare that with cold war era, gap is lot smaller, in that era it was normal for soviet engine to have 1/4 lifespan of US equivalent.

[nutshell]

I think many people make the mistake that airliner jet engines are somehow less sophisticated than jet fighter engines.

They are all optimized to perform their job in their own very specific regime:

* Fighter jet engines are optimized for high kinetic exchanges.

* Airliner jet engines are optimized for having the lowest TCO.

You cannot simply pull the F-135 out of the F-35 and drop it into a 777 and expect it to do wonders, likewise the F-35 would look rather silly with the worlds most efficient GE90 jet engine wouldn't it?

I actually pictured in my head a F35 with a GE90 under the belly and i was hilarious lol.

[element1loop]

The static uninstalled thrust levels of the F135 is 43,000 lbs of thrust while demonstrating a lifespan of more than 11,000 hrs.

Read here: http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=m ... 44cf02fb30

I don't think that's what it means Z1, the 2007 article says this:

" ... accumulated during the F-35 concept demonstration program, puts total engine test program hours logged at more than 11,000."

Been awhile since I looked, but the best test rig hours I've seen for F135 was around 5,260 hrs extended service stress testing of two stock engines. And that was ten years later, in 2017.

[zero-one]

I don't think that's what it means Z1, the 2007 article says this:

okay, but what is the original designed life span of the F-135 anyway? I've heard number like 8,000 - 12,000 hrs being thrown around.

[element1loop]

I don't think that's what it means Z1, the 2007 article says this:

okay, but what is the original designed life span of the F-135 anyway? I've heard number like 8,000 - 12,000 hrs being thrown around.

Not that I've seen. Though F135 will be heavily derated for assured single-engine reliability in an F-35. That's normal for single-turbine aircraft to gain certification.

But what you say would eclipse total airframe hours, i.e. no need to ever rebuild the engine, during the life cycle of an F-35.

Why spend money extending life to 12,000 hr if you plan to uprate the core's thrust and economy at least once in MLU, before say 3,000 hr?

You'd be better served by freeing up excess thrust capacity from the beginning, via software, so it burns out at an average of 4,000 hr.

[element1loop]

Remember the engine fire saga required the entire core of all F135s to be rebuilt?

Would you not take that golden opportunity to upgrade the cores of all jets, given you had to make new core parts for all of them? What better opportunity are you going to get to apply your latest fully tested core upgrades, given it was widely perceived, at that time, that the F-35 was badly 'underpowered'.

Shortly after this engine rebuild, all pilots suddenly started saying how impressive F-35 acceleration is, how surprising it is, etc. (Spud will spank me for that speculation)

Whatever.

But as we saw last week, LRIP 1 & 2 aircraft have just been funded for an "engine UPGRADE"---their wording.