Free Web NovelChapter 852: Chapter 447: Is There Still a Need for Group One?_3
"Me?"
Sun Lei pointed at himself with some surprise.
"Of course, you’re in charge of this section," Zhao Yi said seriously. "Just talk about the bleed valve."
"Alright."
Sun Lei stood up, looking rather nervous as he glanced around. He walked over to Zhao Yi’s side, grabbed the document, and began to explain, "For stability, we have designed a completely new type of bleed valve, totally altering the original simple piston design in favor of a multi-porous path for pressure relief."
"The holes in the engine body correspond to each stage of the compressor, with each porous pathway leading to the final exhaust port..."
"We located the final exhaust port around the jet nozzle and simultaneously changed the outer shape of the compressor..."
Sun Lei was quite nervous at first, even making mistakes twice, but after a while, it seemed like he found his stride, speaking continuously for over ten minutes, covering everything from the porous pathway piston design to the outer design of the compressor, including the secondary air duct, amounting to changes to both the inner and outer shapes of the engine.
The design was incredibly innovative, with its core residing in the porous pathways and pistons as well as the outer shape of the compressor wrapping the combustion chamber. With just a simple sketch, Sun Lei managed to impress several people in the meeting room, including Zhang Gangchuan, who marveled, "Quite ingenious!"
"This design, it’s not easy to even think of!"
"Was it Academician Zhao?"
After Sun Lei finished his explanation, Zhang Gangchuan couldn’t help asking a question to which Zhao Yi shook his head, "It was Zhou Qing who came up with it initially."
"Who is Zhou Qing?"
"Don’t know?"
It wasn’t just the others; even Zhang Gangchuan didn’t recognize Zhou Qing. Zhou Qing was just an engineer for maintenance of the prototype, essentially a technical blue-collar worker within the development team, and having his name remembered was not an easy feat.
Zhou Qing, upon hearing his name mentioned, became somewhat excited, raising his hand high, "Me! Me!"
The rest of the room turned to look at him.
In that moment, Zhou Qing reached the pinnacle of his life; all the leaders in the conference room, as well as the elite development personnel, focused their attention on him. He even cleared his throat, thinking he should say something.
Liu Jiankun, interested, asked, "This design is quite innovative. Is there anything else?"
Suddenly, everyone’s attention shifted to the next technical issue.
Zhou Qing swallowed his words back down.
Truth be told, with the new designs and improvements discussed so far, it was already enough to surprise everyone, even leaving Zhang Gangchuan speechless, feeling that with these enhancements, plus the performance of the K03B, it was certain that an application for design finalization could be made, marking a very significant difference from the Kunlun Engine, with the only uncertainty being whether the designs and improvements were correct. Once it reached the stage of design verification, detailed substantiation would undoubtedly be necessary.
What the review team didn’t expect, though, was that Group Two of Kunlun only covered the main modifications in their report. There were still additional adjustments that hadn’t been mentioned. Following that, Zhao Yi let Yuan Haitao and Li Rongmao each elucidate on the designs of the combustion chamber partitioning, compressor porous pathway pistons, and the new blade materials, and later he himself talked about changes to the main spindle’s forward sector blades and the fan section.
The forward sector blades and fan section of the main spindle were integrated, but not within the scope of ’design verification,’ with no target aircraft model specified, meaning the demands for the engine were uncertain. The requirements for the forward sector blades and fans for Turbofan Engines could be vastly different depending on the use case.
For instance, if the forward sector blades and fan were designed to be very large, they would create considerable drag, greatly reducing the engine’s thrust-to-weight ratio, but could significantly cut down fuel consumption for commercial airliners.
Conversely.
Fighter jets require the forward sector blades and fan of a Turbofan Engine to be as small as possible. The smaller they are, the less resistance they possess, and the better if the second or third air ducts aren’t needed at all; this could produce tremendous thrust, supporting supersonic flights or even speeds several times the speed of sound.
That is the difference.
Zhao Yi still made modifications to the forward sector blades and fan; he mainly adjusted the blade shapes and their angle of attack. Behind the large fan, he added a thinner, smaller fan. Consequently, the blades in that forward section were reduced by two, "This combined design generates more forward thrust without adding weight, since the forward sector blades don’t require much from the material. I’ve discussed it with the material team; switching to some new types of materials could even reduce weight."
Performance enhancement is key.
No matter what type of aircraft the engine is used for, designs that directly improve performance are certainly universally adoptable.
As for the modifications Zhao Yi spoke about regarding the fan, they didn’t elicit much reaction because the review team members had already been sufficiently astounded.
"Is it over?"
"That’s it?"
Liu Zecheng slowly came to his senses, reacting somewhat obtusely; he was probably the one who felt most out of his depth in the conference room, his understanding of aviation engines being quite limited. Some parts sounded like gibberish to him, but he knew the shock that Group Two’s design had brought to everyone.
One thing he understood clearly--
Zhao Yi had led Group Two in making massive changes to the Kunlun Engine, so drastic that it was completely overhauled from the inside out, including the core components like the turbine set, combustion chamber, compressor, and even two layers of engine casing and the forward fan section. It would be hard to find any part of the engine that wasn’t modified.
Hence, there was no need to worry about lack of changes in the design; on the contrary, the numerous design changes meant manufacturing the prototype would be quite challenging.
Liu Zecheng knew this much.
If the changes made were minimal, with the experience of manufacturing the Kunlun Engine, some components could be directly used; with a completely new design, the difficulty of production would be much greater.
"No wonder Academician Zhao first inquired about precision engineering; now it all makes sense!" Liu Zecheng finally understood.
At this moment, Zhang Gangchuan was the most embarrassed.
While listening to Group Two of Kunlun’s design introduction, he had been thoroughly engrossed, even offering praise for some of the concepts; but now he was struck with a realization. Group Two had completed all their design work in a very short period, less than three months, even moving directly on to applying for the manufacturing of prototypes, wasn’t their progress almost catching up with Group One?
Moreover, Group Two’s designs were highly sophisticated. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm
If in the later stage of design validation, their designs were all approved, and the corresponding prototypes manufactured...
"Do we, Group One, still need to exist?"
Zhang Gangchuan suddenly became confused, even fearing the loss of his job, and couldn’t help but think, "Maybe... merge with Group Two of Kunlun and together research their designs?"
"No way!"
He immediately shook his head.
The Kunlun Engine group had persisted for so many years, finally had a prototype, and were making promising progress against failures. To give it all up was simply unacceptable.
"Perhaps the prototypes designed by Group Two will have more faults than the Kunlun!" With this thought, he finally calmed down.
