A big country of aerospace with black technology

As more and more deep space exploration projects are carried out, the original rocket thrust is beginning to be somewhat stretched.

Even the most powerful Hongyan rocket currently has difficulty launching large-mass satellites or alien landers to planets hundreds of thousands or even tens of millions of miles away from the earth.

"The Mars exploration plan requires new high-thrust rockets, and the first thing we have to do is solve the heart problem of the rocket!"

At the first all-staff meeting of the Rocket Research Institute after the Spring Festival, Zhang Xingyang announced their next top priority:

"In this year, what we will overcome is the difficulty of the 500-ton liquid oxygen kerosene engine!"

"Create a powerful heart for our future deep space exploration!"

During Zhang Xingyang's time at the helm of the institute, he led everyone to overcome numerous technical problems that they had not solved before.

Therefore, even in the eyes of outsiders, it is an exaggeration to complete the research and development of a new rocket engine in one year, and it is a rocket engine that has never been deployed.

But in the eyes of everyone at the institute, there is nothing strange about it.

It seems that all technical problems will be solved in Zhang Xingyang's hands.

As a result, the conference room filled with people burst into applause like a roaring tsunami.

Thunderous applause also appeared in other video conferences.

It can be seen that Zhang Xingyang already has a strong influence in terms of technology alone.

Of course, the economic influence is also very powerful.

After all, the research institute plus its many subordinate factories, companies, industrial bases, etc. can provide more than 80,000 employees.

Now it has become a domestic carbon fiber Longteng Materials Group with more than 30,000 employees.

Among these people, there are roughly 20,000 scientific researchers.

The institute invests billions in various technologies every year.

So, no matter how much you earn every year, you still can’t afford to invest a huge amount of money in it.

This is also an important reason why various patented technologies of the institute have emerged in endlessly in recent years.

In the past year, the institute has applied for and registered thousands of patented technologies.

These are the results of countless shocking silvers.

The 500-ton liquid oxygen and kerosene engine is not just a five-fold enlargement of the original 110-ton liquid oxygen and kerosene engine.

There are many issues involved here.

First, there is the turbine disk at the core of the engine.

"The turbopump we currently use on the Hongyan rocket can deliver 400 kilograms of fuel per second. If we want to increase the thrust of the engine to 500 tons, we must deliver at least 1,500 kilograms of fuel per second."

Su Xiao first briefly introduced the situation everyone is facing now.

The turbopump is the core of the engine and is responsible for transporting liquid oxygen and kerosene from the fuel tank to the combustion chamber.

Function, equivalent to the human heart.

Of course, its power is much stronger than the human heart. Even in a fantasy world, this power is at the level of a dragon's heart.

"According to the supercomputer simulation calculation results, in order to achieve such a delivery volume, the rotation speed of the turbine pump will reach 16,000 times per second, and the pressure will reach 75 MPa!"

Today's Rocket Research Institute is not short of money, and naturally has all kinds of equipment.

The supercomputer Shenteng 1800 has an actual computing speed of one trillion operations per second and a peak computing speed of two trillion operations.

This machine is specially customized from computers, and its performance ranks 43rd among the world's top 500 supercomputers in 2002.

It is also an extremely important scientific research equipment in the research institute.

The time allocated to the materials experiment center is not very sufficient.

After all, the Rocket Research Institute not only studies rockets, but its business also includes some powerful guys.

Those things that cannot be actually tested will require supercomputing much longer than Su Xiao and the others.

"Our current problem is to find a material that can bear such high strength and pressure!"

"According to the two days of experiments, the high-temperature alloy we used before showed microscopic fractures at 12,000 revolutions."

"At 16,000 rpm, large-scale cracking occurred in just 30 seconds of operation."

Su Xiao frowned and explained to everyone in the audience the shortcomings of the current materials.

Now that Su Xiao had just celebrated her thirtieth birthday, she no longer looked like the little girl she had been when she first entered the institute, with her frowning face giving people a full sense of seriousness.

The speed of a general aviation engine is no more than 50,000 revolutions per minute, which translates to less than 1,000 revolutions per second.

The speed of the rocket engine is almost twenty times that of theirs!

Extremely high rotational speed requires not only ultra-high material strength, but also extremely high temperatures.

At such a high speed, even if a lot of heat dissipation methods are used, heat accumulation is a terrible thing.

The operating temperature of the rocket engine turbopump is above 2500 degrees for a long time.

As for ordinary aero engines, the temperature is basically 1500 degrees, which has already caused a lot of headaches for aerospace designers.

However, Su Xiao and the others also have a good side compared to aviation designers.

That is, the service life of rocket engines is extremely short.

Without considering reuse, the working time of the first-stage rocket for a single mission will not exceed 200 seconds.

The service life of an aircraft engine, no matter how short it is, is hundreds of hours.

The difference between the two is quite large.

"Can we try to add a little rhenium metal to single-crystal superalloys?"

A researcher who had just entered the institute put forward his own ideas at this time.

Lidya Su looked at him and recalled his resume in his mind.

Lu Junsheng is one of the beneficiaries of the institute’s university cooperation project. He studied the field of high-temperature alloys during his doctoral period.

However, the high-temperature alloys he studied at that time were different from the high-temperature alloys that are required today with operating temperatures above 3,000 degrees.

It is a high-temperature alloy developed for turbofan X to improve the heat accumulation in the engine core.

"Tell me what you think." Su Xiao also became interested.

Rhenium is one of the rarest elements in the earth's crust. The average content is estimated to be one part per billion. The current global proven reserves are only 2,000 tons. The reserves are very small. Most of them are associated with molybdenum and copper mines. produce.

This makes this metal extremely expensive, with the price per kilogram being around $1,500.

In fact, at this time in 2003, the price of rhenium metal was still at its low point. After nearly ten years, its price will soar to US$10,000 per kilogram.

Of course, there are very complex factors interfering here, but even if the factors of futures speculation are excluded, the actual price of rhenium metal has remained roughly at US$3,000 per kilogram.

This is a very high price for industrial raw material metals.

In contrast, pure titanium for industrial use normally costs only 15 to 20 US dollars per kilogram.

The price difference between the two is hundreds of times.

"In our previous laboratory single crystal growth furnace, after adding 5% of rhenium metal, the strength and high temperature resistance of the high-temperature alloy were improved, and the structural properties were also greatly improved."

Lu Junsheng confidently introduced his previous research results during his school days to everyone.

"After applying our experimental products, the engine's operating temperature increased by about 8%, which in turn increased the engine's thrust by about 3%."

Many people present have worked with the turbofan engine project team for several years.

I am no stranger to various data of aero engines.

Naturally, we can also understand the significance of the previous research done by Lu Junsheng and others.

Don't underestimate this 3% thrust.

For an engine with a thrust of 140KN, if the thrust can be increased by 3%, it means that the take-off weight of the fighter aircraft can be increased by about one ton.

If the issue of hardpoints is not considered, two more ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles can be installed.

Alternatively, the combat range can be increased by about five percent.

"This is worth trying." Su Xiao said after thinking about several articles about rhenium metal that she had seen recently.

In fact, the high-temperature alloys they used before also added metal rhenium, but no in-depth research was conducted in this area.

Because the turbine pump disc with the addition of rhenium metal failed in the first experiment.

At that time, they temporarily gave up this technical route.

But now, they have no other better plan, so they can only start from scratch and follow this old path.

The only ways they can think of to improve the strength and working temperature of high-temperature alloys are to add strengthening agents and continue to improve the metallurgical process.

But the laser powder metallurgy they now use is already one of the most advanced in the industry.

After deciding on the research direction, the experimental center began the preparation of several rhenium alloys with different addition ratios.

A few days later, the first batch of test products was born.

These dozen small experimental blocks have used up several kilograms of rhenium metal reserved by the Rocket Research Institute.

Because this thing was used before, but it was used less, and the institute did not specifically reserve it.

For temporary orders, it will take about a month for the goods to arrive.

After all, domestic production of rhenium metal is very scarce.

The metal rhenium mainly comes from the Escondida copper mine in Chile, followed by some production in the northern states of the Eagle Sauce family.

No matter which company you order from, there will be a relatively long delivery time.

So for now, that's all they can achieve.

"Is this the result of a week of hard work?"

Zhang Xingyang asked with interest as he picked up the silver-gray metal block on the table.

"Yes, we added 2.5% of the metal rhenium to this piece."

Su Xiao looked at the alloy in Zhang Xingyang's hand and said:

"According to tests, their strength has increased by about 15%, and their working temperature has increased by 20%."

Zhang Xingyang put down the metal in his hand and listened to what Su Xiao and the others said.

I found that their research was actually quite rough.

Perhaps because the purpose was too clear, they did not pay attention to many properties of rhenium metal.

For example, after adding rhenium metal to high-temperature alloys, a topologically close-packed phase will form, and its microstructure will become quite unstable.

Under high-intensity operating conditions, many problems will occur.

For example, the third-generation single-crystal alloy currently used on the F-22 contains 6% of the metal rhenium. However, the metal microstructure will change during high-speed operation, which will have a negative impact on the operating status of the engine.

However, Zhang Xingyang didn't think much about it. After all, they had just started studying rhenium metal not long ago, so it was normal for them not to be able to fully study it.

"In your follow-up research, you can continue to try adding a little ruthenium metal to single-crystal high-temperature alloys."

The metal ruthenium is almost as rare as the metal rhenium. Ruthenium was the last member of the platinum family of elements to be discovered until 1845.

Although it has the least content among the platinum series elements, the price of ruthenium is very low compared to elements such as platinum and palladium among the platinum series elements.

Moreover, ruthenium is an excellent catalyst.

In 1992, Robert H. Grubbs discovered a type of ruthenium metal catalyst that could catalyze the olefin metathesis reaction, which was of great significance in the petrochemical industry.

It may also be due to factors in different fields, and Su Xiao may not have paid attention to these contents.

Therefore, after Zhang Xingyang proposed adding a certain amount of ruthenium metal to the rhenium superalloy, he showed a puzzled expression.

However, Zhang Xingyang's long-term correctness and foresight in the technical field allowed Su Xiao to suppress her inner doubts.

"We have not yet started the trial production of turbine disks, and the current inventory of rhenium metal has been exhausted."

After explaining to Zhang Xingyang the differences between these dozen rhenium high-temperature alloys, Su Xiao raised the issue of insufficient raw materials.

"The international price of rhenium metal has been relatively low recently, so we can actually stock up on more."

Zhang Xingyang thought for a while and said.

Rhenium metal not only has important uses in the aerospace field, but also has extremely important uses in the fields of aerospace engines and chemical catalysis.

In China, the production of rhenium metal is very low and basically depends on imports.

Unless you can buy those high-grade copper mines abroad, it will be difficult to have a certain say in the pricing of rhenium metal.

These days, the purchase of overseas minerals is still a troublesome and difficult matter.

Not only are there financial issues, there are also possible fraud issues.

For example, after purchasing a large amount of money from the other party's mine, but the other party suddenly declares that the transaction is invalid, then it is not just as simple as losing the money.

More importantly, the original layout of the mining industry was lost.

This kind of thing was relatively rare in the past, because at that time there were no domestic companies with such strength to make purchases abroad.

But in the following decades, there were more of them, so I won’t give examples here.

Therefore, compared to purchasing mines, Zhang Xingyang still prefers to directly purchase finished products of rhenium metal, or semi-finished raw materials.

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