Russian Civil Aviation: News #4

Hole wrote:

Maiden flight?

And if Russia won't act now, that's what is going to happen in a decade or so.

I agree... I have been saying for a while now that Russia should look for other trade partners... the EU and the US are rejecting them because they wont accept them as equal partners and expect them to be their bitch. Russia needs to look at the rest of the world... there are lots of countries out there that need modern productions and technologies and trade partners that don't want to hold them down and stop them from real progress and development, or want to control development and progress to force them to conform to someone elses morals and culture like the west does.

Poor countries probably pay more for things than rich countries do because rich countries make big orders and then demand discounts and concessions and never pay full retail price for anything.

A poor country has potential for development and progress to become a much more successful country... Russia wont suffer or be punished if trade with Ethiopia improves conditions there... I am sure Putin could offer some advice about how to take a broken country dependent on western good will and turning it around into a country that can make its own decisions and stand on its own, but they wont be conditions of trade... there should not be strings attached in either direction... it is just trade... Africa, Asia, Central and South America... there are lots of countries that just want to trade and make money and develop and grow...

According to the press service of the state corporation "Rostec" on December 16, 2020 at the airfield in Zhukovsky, a new passenger regional turboprop aircraft Il-114-300 made its first flight.

Excellent... that should replace the An-24s in civilian airline service... as well as french and canadian replacements...

This is why China does as much as it possibly can by itself and only reluctantly deals with Russia. We see this attitude with Iran also. And to a lesser extent India.

To be fair most countries want to be able to do things themselves... China and Iran probably have more capability of doing things on their own than India does, but that is probably going to change too eventually...

This attitude doesn't bode well for the aviation industry in Russia.

They are creating engine families and avionics families to minimise wasted effort and to be flexible across the board in terms of capabilities...

If you look at car manufacturing the Chinese are making better and better vehicles that in my opinion leave US and European vehicles behind, but they are still not better than Japanese cars... but is that just a matter of time too?

Russia never really dominated the world civilian aircraft market so China getting better in this regard is not as big of an issue for them as it would be for the west.

I would say an improved Chinese civilian aircraft potential is more likely to hit Boeing and Airbus than the Russians...

Chinese arrogance is notorious.

To be clear they are not all the same... there are arrogant idiots... there is plenty in each country...

It would be nice to know how noisy and vibration prone it is inside for passengers.

Should be part of the design... engine and propeller efficiency and of course sound insulation for the cabin...

Maximmmm wrote:Lots of good news at the end of the year!

Right you are. I don't know what is with December and the Russian Aerospace industry. Now hoping for a successful Soyuz launch today from Vostochny to cap it all.

Old tradition. The year ends and they show what they did the last 12 month.

The beginning of testing of the MS-21 with the PD-14 engine is the main aviation event of 2020
Posted on 15.12.2020, 15: 16 | 1 109

Modern aviation is an elite club of a small number of countries that have technological, scientific, financial, production and human resources of a full cycle of creating modern gas turbine engines. The club is really small, only four countries are included in it-these are the USA, France, Great Britain and the Russian Federation. Candidates for membership in this club represented by China, Canada and Brazil, which have large aircraft manufacturing enterprises on their territory, do not have their own modern jet engines for civil aviation, because The state's ability to produce cast cooled blades for a modern gas turbine aircraft engine is an indicator of the highest level of mechanical engineering development.

Gas turbine engines are an endless battle for power, fuel efficiency, environmental friendliness and low noise. In the constant movement forward, designers are forced to look for solutions based on the most advanced technologies in the field of gas dynamics, materials science, and Metalworking. Until recently, the Russian engine industry lagged far behind the world's grandees, but the situation is changing, and this is proved by the beginning of testing of the MEDIUM-haul MS-21 airliner with a PD-14 turbofan engine.

PD-14 is the first domestic development that appeared in our country almost 30 years after the collapse of the USSR. Work on it began in 2008, when the Russian government allocated 15 billion rubles for research and development on the new engine. The first prototype of the 100GG-01 gas generator made its first flight on earth in 2010, and the first complete engine demonstrator first started operating on June 9, 2012.

On October 30, 2015, the 100-07 engine made its first flight on the IL-76LL flying laboratory. The engine passed two stages of testing on the aircraft. During the first stage, as of March 4, 2016, the PD-14 completed 22 hours and 22 minutes in 16 flights. At the second stage - from October 11, 2016 to March 30, 2017, the operating time was 26 hours and 31 minutes in eight flights.

On December 28, 2017, the IL-76LL made its first flight with the 100-11 engine. This copy of the PD-14 was intended for certification. Since the beginning of April 2018, an IL-76LL with a 100-11 engine has completed 14 flights with an operating time of 49 hours and 10 minutes.

On October 18, 2018, Rosaviatsia issued a type certificate for the PD-14 aircraft engine.

On December 15, 2020, a prototype MS-21-310 aircraft with the tail number 73055 first took to the sky powered by PD-14 engines.

What is the special feature of the new Russian turbofan engine and is it really a breakthrough project of the domestic engine industry?

PD-14 is the first Russian civil aircraft engine of the 5th generation
Progress in aircraft engine building is characterized by several parameters, but one of the main ones is the temperature of the gas in front of the turbine. The transition to each new generation of turbofan engines, and there are five in total, was characterized by an increase in this temperature by 100-200 degrees. Thus, the gas temperature of the 1st generation turbofan engines, which appeared in the late 1940s, did not exceed 1150 °K, for the 2nd generation (1950s) this indicator increased to 1250 °K, in the 3rd generation (1960s) this parameter rose to 1450 °K, for engines of the 4th generation (1970-1980) the gas temperature reached 1650 °K. The blades of turbine engines of the 5th generation, the first examples of which appeared in the West in the mid-90s, work at a temperature of 1900 °C. Currently, only 15% of the engines in service in the world are of the 5th generation.

The increase in gas temperature, as well as new design schemes, first of all double-circuit design, have allowed for 70 years of development of the turbofan engine to achieve impressive progress. For example, the ratio of engine thrust to engine mass increased by 5 times during this time and reached 10 times for modern models. The air compression ratio in the compressor has increased 10-fold: from 5 to 50, while the number of compressor stages has halved – on average from 20 to 10. The specific fuel consumption of modern turbofan engines has been reduced by half compared to engines of the 1st generation. Every 15 years, the volume of passenger traffic in the world doubles, while the total fuel consumption of the world's fleet of aircraft remains almost unchanged.

Until recently, Russia produced the only civil aircraft engine of the 4th generation-the PS-90. If we compare the PD-14 with it, then the two engines have similar weights (2950 kg for the basic version of the PS-90A and 2870 kg for the PD-14), dimensions (fan diameter of both 1.9 m), compression ratio (35.5 and 41) and take-off thrust (16 and 14 TC).

In this case, the high-pressure compressor PD-14 consists of 8 stages, and PS-90 - of 13 at a lower total compression ratio. The degree of double-circuit in the PD-14 is twice as high (4.5 in the PS-90 and 8.5 in the PD-14) with the same fan diameter. As a result, the specific fuel consumption in cruising flight of the PD-14 is less, according to preliminary estimates, by 15% compared to existing engines: up to 0.53–0.54 kg / (kgf·h) versus 0.595 kg/(kgf·h) at the PS-90.

PD-14 – the first aircraft engine created in Russia after the collapse of the USSR
The Soviet Union was a great aviation power. In the 1980s, eight of the most powerful aircraft engine design bureaus were operating in the USSR. Often firms competed with each other, as there was a practice of giving the same task to two design bureaus. Alas, times have changed. After the collapse of the 1990s, it was necessary to gather all the industry forces to implement the project of creating a modern engine. The formation of the UEC in 2008 was aimed at creating an organization that could not only preserve the country's competence in gas-turbine construction, but also compete with the world's leading firms.

The main contractor for the PD-14 project is the Aviadvigatel design Bureau (Perm), which also developed the PS-90. Serial production is being organized at the Perm motor plant, but parts and components will be manufactured throughout the country. Ufa motor-building production Association (UMPO), NPO Saturn (Rybinsk), spcg Salyut (Moscow), Metalist-Samara and many others participate in the cooperation.

PD-14-engine for the mainline aircraft of the XXI century
One of the most successful projects in the field of civil aviation of the USSR was the Tu-154 medium-haul aircraft. Produced in the amount of 1026 units, it formed the basis of Aeroflot's fleet for many years. Unfortunately, as time passes, this hard worker is no longer used on commercial airlines. The Tu-154 was equipped with 3rd generation D-30KU engines with a high specific fuel consumption (0.69 kg/kgf * h).

There are fewer States producing modern aviation turbofan engines than there are nuclear-weapon States

The Tu-154 was replaced by the medium-haul Tu-204/214 with the 4th generation PS-90 engines in the conditions of the disintegration of the country and the free market was replaced by foreign manufacturers. Meanwhile, the segment of medium-haul narrow-body aircraft, which is dominated by Boeing-737 and Airbus A320, is the most popular, and the presence on it is a necessary condition for preserving the domestic civil aircraft industry. PD-14 will provide the Russian MS-21 airliner with high competitiveness, first of all, in our domestic market.

PD-14-basic design for the engine family
The letters " PD " stand for promising engine, and the number 14 – thrust in ton-forces. PD-14 is the basic engine for the turbofan engine family with a thrust of 8 to 18 tons. The business idea of the project is that all these engines should be created on the basis of a unified gas generator of a high degree of perfection. The gas generator is the heart of the turbofan engine, which consists of a high-pressure compressor, a combustion chamber and a turbine. It is the manufacturing technologies of these components, primarily the so-called hot part, that are critical.

The range of engines based on the PD-14 gas generator will move downwards to the PD-12 and PD-8 engines. Also, the PD-14 gas generator can become the basis for gas pumping units and gas turbine power plants with a capacity of 8 to 16 MW.

The PD-14 also serves as a platform for testing future technologies - for the CR929 high-power engine, the first stage of testing of a fan demonstrator made of Russian polymer composite materials took place in Perm on June 7, 2020 as part of the PD-14. These blades will be used in the PD-35.

PD-14 is 16 critical technologies
16 critical technologies were developed for the PD-14 under the leadership of the Central Institute of Aviation Engine Building (CIAM), the main Research Institute of the industry and Aviadvigatel Design Bureau: single-crystal high-pressure turbine blades with a promising cooling system that can work at gas temperatures up to 2000°K, a hollow wide-chord fan blade made of titanium alloy, which made it possible to increase the efficiency of the fan stage by 5% compared to the PS-90, a low-emission combustion chamber made of intermetallic alloy, sound-absorbing structures made of composite materials, ceramic coatings on hot parts, hollow blades of low-pressure turbines, etc.

PD-14 continues to improve. This is how a wide-chord fan blade made of carbon fiber was created, the mass of which is 65% of the mass of a hollow titanium blade. CIAM is developing a gearbox that can reduce the fan speed, so that, not tied to the turbine speed, it will work in a more efficient mode. It is also planned to raise the gas temperature in front of the turbine by 50°C. This will increase the thrust of future developments, and reduce specific fuel consumption by another 5%.

PD-14-20 new materials
When creating the PD-14, the developers from the very beginning relied on domestic materials. It was clear that under no circumstances would Russian companies be granted access to new foreign-made materials. VIAM played a leading role here, with the participation of which about 20 new materials were developed for PD-14.

In 2015, for the first time in the country, VIAM specialists manufactured the PD-14 front-end combustion chamber swirler using a domestic metal-powder composition.

But creating the material is half the battle. Sometimes Russian metals are superior in quality to foreign ones, but their use in a civil aircraft engine requires certification in accordance with international standards. Otherwise, the engine, no matter how good it is, will not be allowed to fly outside of Russia. The same applies to the engine manufacturing process: the industry requires certification according to the standards of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). International certification improves the production culture, and UEC enterprises are re-equipping the industry for new technologies. The development of the PD-14 itself was carried out using a new, digital technology, thanks to which the 7th copy of the engine was assembled in Perm using mass production technology, while previously the prototype batch was manufactured in the amount of up to 35 copies.

PD-14 is a catalyst that brings the entire Russian civil engine industry to a new level. Even the IL-76LL flying laboratory, after several years of downtime, needed to be retrofitted with equipment to conduct flight tests of the PD-14. In general, the PD-14 project will save more than 10,000 highly qualified jobs for Russia.

PD-14 is the first domestic engine that directly competes with its Western counterpart
The development of a modern engine takes 1.5-2 times longer than the development of an airplane. With the situation when the engine does not have time to start testing the aircraft for which it is intended, aircraft manufacturers are faced regularly. The first MS-21 took to the skies in May 2017, its powerplant included US-made engines. The PD-14 type certificate was received a year and a half later - in October 2018, and the first flight as part of the MS-21 took place on December 15, 2020. From the very beginning, the MC-21 project provided for an alternative: MC-21 customers can choose between the PD-14 and Pratt & Whitney PW1400G. However, if the sanctions hysteria of the American "partners" reaches a ban on supplying us with engines, then it will be all the worse for P&W - it will face multimillion-dollar financial losses.

Thus, the start of testing of the MS-21 with a domestic main propulsion system can be considered the main event of 2020 in the aviation industry, which opens a new page in the Russian engine industry.

Andrey Velichko,
for the Russian Aviation website"

https://aviation21.ru/nachalo-ispytanij-ms-21-s-dvigatelem-pd-14-glavnoe-aviacionnoe-sobytie-2020-goda/

And when Russian planes stop using US engines they will complain that they don't use US engines any more...


They will complain to the WTO because Russian planes don't come with US or other foreign engines as options...

The reasons for using foreign equipment were sound enough at the time and to be honest now they probably have the technology and skill to replace those systems with equipment that will certainly be cheaper but also more capable than some of the western systems that are considered world standard...

KRET has likely gained a lot with this sort of BS... and now that they are putting new engines into production and scaling their design for a range of other aircraft things are actually looking good... it is probably a good think a pro Russia candidate is not anywhere close to getting into the white house...

That won't happen due to Brazil being an arm of the USA. Best bet if Russia invests indirectly via private into Brazil to push Russian products. Otherwise, all other options won't work as it would directly require government of Russia and Brazil will say no.

@Rodion_Romanovic:

I was going to post the whole article and saw you already linked it, I think it is quite interesting to post the whole text regardless:

MS-21 - a real competitor to the B737 and A320
Published by 26.12.2020, 16:36 | 14263

"The old Soviet Tushki, Yaki and Ily went down in history, and their place in the parks of airlines was taken by both used and new" foreign cars. "At the beginning of the 21st century, it seemed that one could forget about domestic passenger aircraft forever and come to terms with the fact that Russia there is no place in the global civil aviation market, "- these are the words that begin the article about the MC-21 aircraft, published on the Russian Aviation website in 2016 and prepared for the premiere display of the first flight model of the airliner at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant.


But times are changing, and 2020 can be called a milestone year, because at the end of it an event took place that we have been waiting for at least the last 10 years - the beginning of flight tests of the MS-21 with a domestic power plant.

In 2020, IAZ produced the fifth flight model MC-21 - this is the final experimental batch of the aircraft and the first aircraft equipped with PD-14 engines. December 15 MS-21-310 registration No. 73055 took to the sky. This 85-minute flight was the intermediate result of many years of intense, hard and painstaking work of a huge army of scientists, designers, specialists of various profiles, workers at the enterprises of the UAC, UEC, Irkut and the engineering center named after A.S. Yakovlev - the developer of the liner, as well as the ground personnel of the LIiDK OKB im. A.S. Yakovlev in Zhukovsky and test pilots. Now on the agenda is obtaining a type certificate and the construction of serial machines.

By the beginning of 2021, a total of seven prototypes were built - two samples for static and life tests at TsAGI and five flight prototypes, which, since May 2017, have been successively transferred by the aircraft plant for certification tests.

To spite my grandmother I will frostbite my ears

The safety problems of the Boeing 737 MAX have dealt a serious blow to the prestige of the American aircraft manufacturer. The liner has not been flying since March 2019, the company incurs large financial and, most importantly, reputational losses. At the same time, a potential and real competitor, created in a "torn to shreds" "gas station", systematically passes certification tests, and now also with its own engines. In the ruling circles of the United States, this echoes with severe pain, they believe that Russia should not even think about replacing the Boeing with its domestic aircraft.

And the sanctions obscurantism continues - towards the end of 2020, the American Ministry of Trade extended stricter export control standards to key enterprises of the Russian aviation industry. In total, the restrictions affected 41 companies, including the aviation industry - the United Aircraft Corporation, Irkut Corporation, Sukhoi Regional Aircraft, United Engine Corporation, Russian Helicopters and others.

Washington's calculation suggests that it will become much more difficult for Russian enterprises to cooperate with American suppliers of components, since the latter will have to obtain a license from their authorities to trade with companies on the "black list". And given the unpredictability of the US authorities and their absolute incapacity for negotiation, there is no confidence that such licenses will be issued. And this is even despite the fact that the sanctions thus fall on their own companies. In Russia it is called "to spite my grandmother, I will frostbite my ears . "
January 2019. Engaged reverse engines on the run after the next test flight

Remove a competitor

The persistence with which restrictions are imposed on the supply of materials and components for the Russian aircraft, speaks only of one thing - in the United States they are well aware that the MS-21 is a real competitor to the latest iterations of the B737 (and A320 - also), and the flights of a Russian airliner are not "cartoons" of a cardboard airplane. And all those advantages of the MS-21, which have been repeatedly mentioned in the media, are also real. Here are some of them:

Increased comfort due to the larger fuselage diameter. For MS-21, it is 4.06 meters, which is 11 cm more than the A320 and 36 cm more than the Boeing 737.
Increased aisle width between the rows of seats (56-58 cm, depending on the type of seats). This allows the passenger and flight attendants to disperse with the trolley, as well as facilitates faster entry / exit of passengers and minimizes the turnaround time of the aircraft at the intermediate airport.
The use of composite materials made it possible to reduce the weight of the aircraft structure by 25-30%.
Due to the improved wing, the MC-21 has better aerodynamics, less fuel consumption and higher speed. Wing aspect ratio MS-21 - 11.5 without winglets. A320neo - 10.45; B737-800 -900ER - 9.45. Both types are equipped with aerodynamic tips.
The cruising speed of the MC-21 is 870 km / h, which is 25-70 km / h higher than that of aircraft of the same class from Boeing and Airbus.
The presence of the domestic turbojet engine PD-14 - this nullifies the project's dependence on the American company Pratt & Whitney.

The sanctions, of course, affect the course of the MC-21 program, but they cannot stop the start of serial production of the airliner and its delivery to the airline - only slow down.
MS-21 reg. 73054 at the MAKS-2019 air show

“The implementation of our aviation programs continues. In particular, there is a planned work on the development of civilian products using domestic systems of a new generation. Work continues on the Superjet New. The first flight was made by the MS-21 aircraft with the domestic PD-14 engines. The Il-114-300 flew into the air, consisting entirely of domestic components. In the military unit, we have not used foreign components for a long time, ”the UAC press service said on December 21, commenting on the restrictions of the US Department of Commerce.

It is counterproductive to react to Washington's actions by prohibiting Russian companies from cooperating with the United States, it does not meet our national interests. You can remove a competitor from the Russian sky by other methods - subsidizing airlines with domestic equipment in the fleet and introducing duties on the import of foreign aircraft into the country. And such measures are already being taken.

As writes RBK , in 2020, airlines that do not have SSJ100 in their fleet were allocated 9.5 billion rubles, in 2021 such carriers will receive half as much - 4.4 billion.Operators of this aircraft will increase subsidies from 5.7 billion to 9.5 billion (68% of the total amount of subsidies). The press service of the Federal Air Transport Agency previously reported that about 70% of the total amount of subsidies from the federal budget "will be used on the routes declared for operation on the Superjet 100 aircraft."



Airline subsidies in 2021

With the beginning of the arrival of MS-21, Il-114-300, SSJ-New in the fleets of Russian carriers, the squeezing of foreign-made aircraft will continue. In the meantime, Superjet 100 is being "blown away" for them.

Andrey Velichko,
for the site "Aviation of Russia"