RPAGF #499 - Large aircraft mass production and new problems
#499 - Large aircraft mass production and new problems
Around the 1960s, good news came from the aviation sector.
Following the acquisition of the airworthiness certificate from Dongda University, the CAC-120 (Airbus A300) also obtained the European airworthiness certificate, signifying that the new large aircraft officially entered the mass production phase!
The two production lines built by Yandu Aviation Industry Corporation of Dongda University were operating at full capacity to produce orders for domestic and Asian-Pacific markets. At the same time, the Airbus company, a collaboration between Dongda and Rolls-Royce, also began full-capacity mass production on its production line in Westminster. Large quantities of components from Dongda's aviation industry chain began to arrive at the Port of London via long-distance freighters.
Thanks to the technologically advanced turbofan engine from the Bright Sword world, the hundred-seater aircraft from Dongda now has a maximum range of 3,800 kilometers, easily achieving an effective range of 3,500 kilometers, which is more than sufficient for intra-European routes.
It is even more than enough to travel from Lisbon in the southernmost part of Europe to Helsinki in the north. Therefore, after the first batch of test flights, BAC quickly placed an order for 100 aircraft over 5 years, preparing to significantly update the company's European route models. The original propeller and turbojet engine aircraft began to be sold off or leased to small local airlines in the colonies for feeder air transport.
Compared to Boeing and Douglas aircraft of the same seat capacity, the remarkable 15% reduction in fuel consumption resulted in significant operating cost savings, leaving BAC with no choice to consider. With such excellent fuel-efficient aircraft, coupled with the Airbus A300's adoption of European-style cabin separation into business and economy classes in terms of seat design, the comfort of the new ergonomic aircraft seats was also higher than that of the original aircraft seats. Furthermore, the new model's avionics were almost a generation ahead, with the full implementation of computerization and digital instrument displays. After the Airbus A300 went into mass production in Europe, it not only received a large order from BAC.
Air France and Lufthansa, the two airline rivals across the Channel, originally held a rather calm and wait-and-see attitude towards this aircraft.
However, after BAC Aviation put the first two aircraft into operation, they received good market feedback and reputation. Passengers unanimously believed that the new aircraft was definitely more comfortable than the old aircraft. In a survey, over 80% of passengers indicated that if they had a choice at the same time, they would prefer to fly on the new aircraft!
As a result, Air France and Lufthansa could no longer sit still. They also hurriedly approached and ordered 50 Airbus A300s each. These new aircraft would be deployed on the current main European routes to provide a new generation of airliners for frequent air passengers.
In addition, smaller airlines such as those in Portugal, Spain, and Italy also placed orders for three to five aircraft. For a time, orders from the European aviation market even exceeded those from Dongda and the Asia-Pacific region!
This unexpected result surprised Chen Hanyuan. He previously thought that it would take at least three to five years of painstaking effort to open up the European market, waiting for the Airbus A300's reputation to build and the fuel-saving advantages to become apparent before a new round of order peaks would form.
However, he never expected that after the first batch was put into operation, the Airbus A300's reputation would explode immediately!
Of course, this was also related to Rolls-Royce/BAC Aviation. They are now deeply intertwined and are more eager to promote this aircraft. Therefore, they adopted some marketing promotion methods after the first batch was launched. In addition, the aircraft itself was of good quality. Ren Zhong designed and manufactured it with reference to the standards of the 1970s, which was indeed superior to similar Boeing and Douglas hundred-seater aircraft.
This is what allowed the matter to quickly ferment and form market momentum.
After all, from the passengers' point of view, this is an aircraft "produced" by John Bull's own family. They have a sense of trust in their hearts. This is also true for European customers. John Bull's family has always been at the forefront of aviation. Now, they have come up with a very sincere new aircraft, which is naturally easy for them to accept.
If it were completely produced by Dongda, the matter would be difficult to say. At least in terms of acceptance in Europe, even for viewers who have seen the first manned spacecraft, there would still be some doubts about high-tech products such as airliners.
With more than 200 orders in hand, Rolls-Royce was completely relieved. Simon Robert, President of Rolls-Royce, ordered the airworthiness certificate application team to fully operate the North American airworthiness certificate, and went to 10 Downing Street many times to report the progress of the matter to the Prime Minister in person.
Now, using the dual power of the official and corporate sides, they are sparing no effort to promote the acquisition of the North American airworthiness certificate.
Judging from the current market feedback, not to mention anything else, the current Airbus A300 is equally competitive on North American intra-state routes, especially for the 3,500-kilometer market, it is simply an invincible existence. Given the excellent initial flight demonstration market feedback from BAC Aviation, several major North American airlines have sent people to Rolls-Royce to learn more about this model.
In particular, they verified the details of fuel consumption. They even had specialists take BAC flights to experience the actual flight and check the actual fuel consumption. The feedback they saw and heard from the front line was almost all positive!
The only question they raised was: "When will you launch a customized aircraft with a range of 4,500 kilometers!"
Because routes between cities such as Seattle to Miami and Los Angeles to Portland exceed 4,000 kilometers. Basically, domestic routes between major cities in North America are within a range of 4,500 kilometers.
However, there are quite a few city combinations with direct flights exceeding 4,000 kilometers between the two places, so the North American market is very sensitive to this range.
After all, who would want to buy a hundred-seater large aircraft and eventually find that there are still many city routes that cannot be flown directly? For airlines, this is a huge challenge for aircraft route design.
After the plan was submitted, it was rejected before it even reached Ren Zhong.
This plan is simply cutting your feet to fit the shoes.
The proper solution is to adjust the design of the wings, increase a part of the wings and add a folding winglet to increase the overall load capacity of the aircraft without affecting the existing cargo and take-off standards.
This way, you can have the best of both worlds. Fill the fuel tank more to fly further, and fill it less for shorter routes. With the addition of the folding winglet modification, the new model will not increase fuel consumption much, so this new plan is the best way to go.
The folding winglet from the main world, scientifically known as the wingtip winglet, has the wing surface at a specific angle to the direction of flight of the fuselage. The combined force of the vortices on the winglets on both sides of the aircraft can not only provide lift, but also increase flight thrust.
In the main world, the successful development of winglets was a significant achievement in the field of aerodynamics, with important implications for reducing flight fuel consumption and improving flight economy and environmental protection. For such an achievement, Ren Zhong would of course adopt the doctrine of 'seizing it' and directly arrange for its implementation.
Of course, the patent rights would permanently belong to Dongda's aviation industry.
Thanks to the support of the main world's technology, the verification process was very fast. The full-size wind tunnel model of the first-generation prototype was quickly produced and aerodynamic verification began.
At the same time, the development of the CAC-150 (Airbus A310) also began with the prototype design work, which was basically based on the CAC-120 extended-range model, with the wings further enlarged and the fuselage lengthened to add six rows of seats.
Originally, doing so would require increasing the total weight by a considerable amount. Before the WS-9 turbofan engine was updated, the unchanged power would lead to a reduction in the thrust-to-weight ratio. Although this would not affect the take-off and landing of the passenger plane, it would affect the maximum economical cruising speed.
However, considering that carbon fiber would soon achieve mass production, if carbon fiber was used as a replacement, apart from other things, the carbon fiber composite seats alone would be more than 35% lighter than ordinary aluminum seats.
In addition to the seats, a large amount of aviation aluminum alloy used on the wings could also be replaced by carbon fiber on a large scale. If carbon fiber composite materials were used extensively on this newly designed CAC-150, it is initially estimated that the weight could be reduced by about 4,000 kilograms based on the existing aluminum alloy materials. In this way, the weight increase due to the lengthened fuselage and enlarged wings could be almost completely offset.
In other words, the net weight of the CAC-150, which had expanded significantly in size, would not be much different from the CAC-120 after using carbon fiber composite materials.
Thus, under the condition of using turbofan engines with the same thrust, the CAC-150 increased its carrying capacity by 25%, but other aspects remained almost unchanged, indirectly further improving the fuel efficiency and per-seat economic benefits of the passenger plane.
If this passenger plane were to be launched, its advantages for 150-seat medium- and long-haul regional passenger planes would be almost overwhelming!
However, although the research and laboratory production process design of T700 carbon fiber material has been completed, large-scale production lines are still in the trial production process. The research on T800 has made some progress. According to the reverse engineering research of the main world team, there have been preliminary laboratory production results, but the production process design part is still under research, lagging behind the mass production of T700 by at least about 2 years.
However, the direction of future applications has now been determined, with the primary application being in the aviation field.
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Low-grade T300 carbon fiber composite materials are used to make aviation seats, completely replacing ordinary aluminum alloy seats. High-end T700 and T800 carbon fiber composite materials will be used commercially on a large scale in the fuselage and wings, replacing a large amount of aviation aluminum alloy to reduce the weight of the aircraft.
Not only in passenger planes, but also in fighter jets, bombers, and other aspects, it will be applied on a large scale in the future. Reducing the weight of a fighter jet weighing more than ten tons would allow it to carry 2 to 3 more heavy bombs or missiles, or increase its combat radius by carrying more fuel. For bombers, the significance is even greater. For bombers of the C54 level, the increased internal fuel capacity from weight reduction can increase the range by thousands of kilometers. If a comprehensive modification is carried out, it would be enough to rejuvenate this old aircraft and enter the realm of strategic bombers with a range of 8,000 to 10,000 kilometers.
It can be said that the problems in the aviation field introduced from Northern Airlines suddenly triggered Ren Zhong's new development plan for the aviation field.
On the one hand, the development and introduction of new materials, especially the introduction of carbon fiber composite materials, is crucial for the future development of the aviation industry in terms of weight reduction. Occupying the commanding heights of technology in this regard will be very beneficial for the subsequent dominant position in aviation.
On the other hand, it triggered the research on long-range passenger planes. Only market demand has a significant impact on the entire industry. Although the pursuit of range in the aviation industry is endless, only clear demand can be transformed into a real driving force for technological progress.
The 4,500-kilometer range is not a problem at all for four-engine passenger planes, which can be downgraded from the 6,000-kilometer level, but considering the fuel consumption of four-engine passenger planes, such operating costs are a huge burden for airlines.
In the current space-time of the main world and the Bright Sword world, the mainstream approach is to research three-engine-powered passenger planes, including the Hawker Trident, DC-10, MD-11, Boeing 727, and Lockheed L101, which were once all the rage.
For Ren Zhong, this is a transitional design. The future world will prove that this design is very easy to become outdated and has no development prospects at all.
Therefore, in terms of technical routes, Ren Zhong insisted on adopting a twin-engine design mode for medium- and long-range passenger planes, preferring to find ways in aircraft design and weight reduction or aircraft engine thrust, rather than choosing the non-mainstream three-engine design.
And for truly long-range large intercontinental passenger planes, Ren Zhong is optimistic about four-engine large passenger planes.
The most eye-catching of these is the Boeing 747 large commercial wide-body passenger/cargo transport aircraft!
As the ruler of intercontinental passenger planes, Ren Zhong had long made technical research and deployment for cross-world reference. A team began to devote themselves to studying various materials of the 747 passenger plane that he had brought from the main world.
Therefore, for other four-engine passenger planes, Ren Zhong is now, in addition to having people iterate on the propeller of the C-54 successor series, using a new type of turboprop engine based on the advanced PW127J turboprop engine to replace the original propeller engine, which increased the flight speed of the Yun-8, developed based on the original C-54, to 650 kilometers per hour, and also increased the range by 25%, making Dongda's first strategic bomber improvement have a significant improvement.
Subsequent weight reduction modifications will further improve the new strategic bomber modification.
The introduction of turboprop engines has provided a new evolutionary direction for the original purely propeller-engine transport aircraft.
For the Yun-6, the successor development model based on the C-47, Ren Zhong's expectation is naturally the carrier of radar early warning aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft. After adopting the WJ-11 engine developed from the PW127J, the power has directly increased by more than double, greatly improving the tactical indicators of the Yun-6B. The maximum flight speed has increased to 675 kilometers per hour. Now, the Yun-6B, in addition to having many shadows of the C-47 in appearance, has completely lost its original features in terms of power and avionics.
The increase in power has also brought about a surge in carrying capacity and flight speed, as well as a doubling of the range after increasing the fuel tank, making the Yun-6B undergo a complete transformation and become a very reliable front-line tactical transport aircraft for Dongda.
The subsequent development based on turboprops is another feasible technical route for Ren Zhong for the development of transport aircraft. After all, turboprop is a very mature, low-cost, and efficient aviation power. (End of this chapter)