Great Power Technology.

Chapter 416 Nuclear Power Engine Test Run!

When the situation in the South Island began to turmoil, Ye Zhou finally waited for the first nuclear-powered aircraft ground test car that he had been thinking about.

Due to unknown safety, he was not invited to participate in this test drive-or strictly prohibited him from participating.

Therefore, he can only watch the whole process of the test drive through remote video. Except for some more confidential data on the interface, he is no different from ordinary staff who watch the live broadcast from the internal network.

At ten o'clock in the morning, all preparations had been completed on the ground test platform, and the engine had been hoisted onto the rack. Because of the particularity of the engine fuel, even the oil pipeline was directly omitted this time, except for the circuit used to control the core of the aviation engine. In addition, a purely mechanical emergency shutdown device was installed where the oil pipeline originally belonged.

This device is independent of the control system of the aviation engine itself. In case of an emergency, it will directly open the reactor core through violent disassembly, and pour a large amount of coolant and moderator through the pipeline to force the fission reaction to stop.

During this process, all the radiation produced by fission in the core will leak out. Therefore, in order to avoid nuclear radiation pollution, the test bench is actually sealed in a huge cement coffin. The engineering troops will seal and bury the entire cement coffin, and completely abandon the prototype of this nuclear-powered aviation engine.

Therefore, this aviation engine actually only has one chance.

If it fails, it will take another year, or at least half a year, to start all over again.

This made everyone a little nervous. After all, this engine not only condensed their hard work for more than two years, but also represented the first major achievement of the Nantianmen project.

If the nuclear-powered aviation development is successful, the biggest difficulty of Jinwu will be solved; if it fails, the progress of the entire Jinwu project will be slowed down.

Ye Zhou, who was sitting in the conference room, nervously looked at the screen. The staff who were busy doing the final inspection had already begun to evacuate. After that, once the control rods are pulled out, the core will quickly enter the critical state.

Afterwards, the core that enters the critical state will generate a large amount of heat, heat the air outside the reactor through the heat exchanger, and generate the high-temperature, high-pressure airflow required by the turbine engine, thereby driving the turbine engine to run.

In essence, this is an engine that replaces fossil fuel heating with nuclear fuel heating. The nuclear core replaces the original combustion chamber. The so-called "combustion" has changed from direct to indirect, but the basic principle is actually not the same. No change.

Therefore, those technical achievements made on the Qilian engine can still be applied to this engine, such as fan blade materials, high temperature resistant materials, radiation protection materials...
It wasn't until this time that Ye Zhou discovered that the scientific and technological achievements he had obtained in the previous simulation, especially the achievements in the field of materials science, actually played a greater role than he imagined.

"So, this engine is so big, how will it be installed on an airplane? According to what you told me before, the thrust of an engine is at most about 100 tons. Judging from the current design of Jinwu , at least 400 tons of thrust is needed, how should this follow-up be arranged?"

Hearing Chen Hao's question, Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"What you see now is not 'an engine', but a nuclear reactor, and a turbofan engine."

"To be precise, the structure of a nuclear-powered engine is different from that of a traditional aviation engine, because the way to generate high-pressure airflow is different, and it must be split into two parts."

"One of these parts is the reactor part, which functions as the 'core combustor', where the heat heats the incoming air in the intake ducts, which is then piped out to the actual 'engine'. "

"So, the volume of this engine system is not equal to the volume of the reactor plus the engine, but, on one reactor, multiple engines can be configured."

"As long as the heat generated by the nuclear reactor is sufficient, theoretically, a reactor can mount more than 8 engines—of course, we don't need that many."

After listening to Ye Zhou's explanation, Chen Hao nodded slightly, and then continued to ask:
"Then the question is, is such a small reactor enough heat?"

"Theoretically, it is enough. This reactor core uses the fifth-generation miniaturized thorium-based molten salt reactor. The thermal efficiency is more than 60% higher than that of the mainstream Rankine cycle, and the working temperature can reach up to 1600 degrees. On par."

"What's more, the reactor you see is small compared to the power reactors you've seen. In fact, the size of the 'combustion chamber' of this aeroengine system is larger than the sum of the 10 Qilian engines. Be big."

"So, it's no problem at all pushing the turbofan engine at the back end, the problem is that the gas expansion rate is smaller compared to the way of chemical combustion."

"With this one defect, we can only win by quantity."

"In general, instead of worrying about thrust, it is better to worry about air intake. With such a huge amount of high-pressure gas consumption, I don't know how to design the subsequent Jinwu to meet the air intake requirements... But this is not the case. problem to be solved today."

"Okay, now the engine is starting to warm up, let's see first."

While speaking, the data on the screen showed that the engine had started to warm up, and the temperature of the core continued to rise, and finally stopped at around 700 degrees. Hot wake.

At this time, the thrust of the entire engine had risen to 15 tons, but it did not continue to rise like the previous Qilian engine test run.

"What stage is this?"

At this time, Chen Hao seemed to have regarded Ye Zhou as an encyclopedia, and whenever he encountered a question he couldn't understand, he would ask questions directly.

"Now is the warm-up and stabilization stage. The heat exchange device of a nuclear powered engine is very complicated. It is impossible for it to control a stable combustion temperature as long as the amount of fuel injected is controlled like a traditional fossil fuel engine."

"Every time the engine is started, the fission core needs to be stabilized, the heat exchanger needs to be stabilized, and the various circuits also need to be stabilized. This is also the biggest problem with nuclear engines - they cannot be started in time."

"It is for this reason that the Golden Crow is designed to be of such a large size, because it is destined to maintain air cruise for a long time after taking off, and the time it stays on the ground is actually very short."

"Short enough that it may not exceed 10 minutes. Landing, crew change, takeoff, it's as simple as that."

It's really the sun that never sets.

Hearing this, Chen Hao thought secretly in his heart.

Time passed by, the engine warm-up state finally ended, and the thrust data displayed on the screen began to rise slowly. Starting from 15 tons, the data climbed steadily and regularly to 60 tons.

To this extent, it can basically be considered that the basic performance of this engine has reached the level of the current traditional engine.

But neither Ye Zhou nor Chen Hao are satisfied with this result, because they have all seen the feat of the Qilian engine breaking through 140 tons of thrust in the first test run.

"How many tons do you think we can get this time?"

Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"Theoretically, if the bearing capacity of each module of the engine is not considered, the power output by the core is enough for the engine to push the thrust to more than 300 tons, but we cannot achieve such structural strength, so we can only disperse the power."

"There is only one engine now, so... I think it should be controlled at about 120 tons."

As if responding to his words, the engine and thrust data continued to climb, and the core temperature also exceeded the subcritical temperature of 1000 degrees. In just 2 minutes, the engine thrust directly jumped from 60 tons to 100 tons.

A large amount of redundant gas is discharged through the reserved exhaust port, simulating the working state of multiple machines in parallel, but the strange thing is that everyone can clearly see the light distorted by the high-temperature airflow, but they can't see the wake itself at all.

If the voice transmission of the live broadcast is turned off, the working state of this engine is a kind of complete silence.

Apart from the slight vibration of the engine structure, it is not even possible to tell whether it has started from the appearance.

"It's almost reaching the limit—the temperature reaches 1600 degrees, which is close to the critical temperature of the thorium-based molten salt reactor. We must reserve a certain safety margin."

Hearing Ye Zhou's words, Chen Hao asked in surprise:

"You mean we can run the engine supercritically if necessary?"

"Yes, but it is easy to enter the supercritical state, but it is not easy to return to the critical state. This should be said to be a one-time solution that can only be used when the situation is extremely critical."

Chen Hao nodded solemnly, and turned his gaze to the screen again.

Just as Ye Zhou judged, the engine's thrust finally stabilized at 120 tons. After running for more than ten minutes, the engine began to enter the shutdown process.

One hour later, the engine was turned off and the radiation detection was completed. After confirming that the radiation dose in the workshop was normal, the staff opened the door of the workshop and re-entered the test bench workshop.

It wasn't until the final finishing inspection was over that thunderous cheers erupted in the workshop.

Ye Zhou let out a long sigh of relief and exited the live broadcast interface.

……

The first test run of the nuclear-powered engine ended without any waves, but the sensation it caused worldwide was like a monstrous wave.

That night, with the announcement of the test results, sensational news began to appear on the headlines of the international media.

"The cold war monster is back, and the eastern dragon has regained the forbidden technique!"

"The man-made sword of Damocles, the hilt has been cast!"

"Golden Crow project breakthrough, how big is Huaxia's ambition?"

"Nuclear powered engine, is it good news or bad news?"

"The product from hell is about to fly to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of the east is actually the kingdom of Satan?"

.....
In this series of reports, only Mao Xiongguo's report is the most normal.

"Picture 95 LAL is recast in glory, the giant red bird is about to soar!"

(End of this chapter)