Simulation: Great Power Technology

When the situation in the South Island began to surging, Ye Zhou finally waited for the first nuclear-powered flight test on the ground that he was longing for.

Due to unknown safety, he was not invited to participate in this test drive - or was strictly forbidden to participate.

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

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

This device is independent from the control system of the aviation engine itself. In the event of an emergency, it will directly open the reactor core through violent dismantling, 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 generated by fission in the core will be leaked. Therefore, in order to avoid nuclear radiation pollution, the test bench is actually sealed in a huge cement coffin. The engineering troop will seal the entire cement coffin and bury it, completely abandoning this prototype of a nuclear-powered aircraft.

Therefore, this aircraft actually has only one chance.

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

This made everyone nervous. After all, this engine not only embodies their efforts for more than two years, but also represents the first major achievement of the Nantianmen project.

If the nuclear-powered aeronautical development succeeds, 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, looked nervously at the screen on the screen. The staff who were busy doing the final inspection had already started to evacuate. The heavy radiation protection isolation door of the test bench workshop was closed, and the engine entered the simulated operation inspection stage. After that, once the control rods are pulled out, the core will quickly enter a critical state.

After that, the core that enters the critical state will generate a lot 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 promoting the operation of the turbine engine.

In essence, this is an engine that uses nuclear fuel to replace fossil fuel heat. The nuclear core replaces the original combustion chamber. The so-called "combustion" has changed from direct to indirect, but the basic principle is actually the same. Nothing has changed.

Therefore, the 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 was only at this time that Ye Zhou realized that the scientific and technological achievements he had obtained in his previous simulations, especially the achievements in the field of materials science, had actually played a greater role than he had imagined.

"So, the size of this engine is so large, how will it be installed on a plane? According to what you told me before, the thrust of an engine is only about 100 tons at most. Judging from the current design of Jinwu , at least 400 tons of thrust are needed, how to arrange this follow-up?"

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."

"Precisely, the structure of a nuclear-powered engine is different from that of a conventional aeroengine, because it has to be split into two parts because of the different way of generating high-pressure airflow."

"One of these parts is the reactor part, which functions as the 'core combustion chamber', where the heat heats the air rushing in through the intake ducts and is ducted out into the real '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, then in theory, a reactor can be mounted with 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 there enough heat in such a small reactor?"

"Theoretically enough, this core uses a fifth-generation miniaturized thorium-based molten salt reactor, whose thermal efficiency exceeds the mainstream Rankine cycle by more than 60%, and the working temperature can reach up to 1,600 degrees, which is similar to the traditional combustion-type aeroengine. Comparable."

"More importantly, you are looking at the small size of the reactor, which is compared to the power generation reactors you have seen. In fact, the size of the 'combustion chamber' of this aero-engine system is more than 10 Qilian engines combined. be big."

"So, it has no problem pushing the turbofan at the back end, the problem is that the gas expansion rate is smaller than the chemical combustion method."

"This flaw can only be won by quantity."

"In general, rather than 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 follow-up Golden Crow to meet the air intake requirements... But this is not The problem to be solved today.”

"Okay, now the engine is warming up, let's see first."

During the conversation, the data on the screen showed that the engine had entered preheating, the core temperature continued to rise, and finally stopped in the range of around 700 degrees. The airflow entered the turbofan engine along the secondary circuit, the fan blades began to rotate, and the engine nozzles sprayed out. Hot wake.

At this time, the thrust of the entire engine has risen to 15 tons, but it has not continued 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 that he could not understand, he would directly ask questions.

"Now is the stage of preheating and stabilization. The heat exchange device of a nuclear power engine is very complicated. It is impossible to control the stable combustion temperature as long as the fuel injection volume is controlled like a traditional fossil fuel engine."

"Every time the engine is started, the fission core needs to be stable, the heat exchanger needs to be stable, and the various circuits also need to be stable. This is also the biggest problem of nuclear power engines - unable to start in time."

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

"As short as possible, no more than 10 minutes. Landing, crew change, takeoff, it's that simple."

It really is the sun that never sets.

Hearing this, Chen Hao thought to himself.

After one minute and one second, the engine warm-up state finally ended, and the thrust data displayed on the screen began to rise slowly. From 15 tons, the data steadily and regularly climbed 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 were satisfied with this result, because they had 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 you can get this time?"

Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"Theoretically speaking, if the bearing capacity of each module of the engine is not considered, the power output by the core is enough to push the thrust of this engine 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 around 120 tons."

As if responding to his words, the launch and thrust data continued to climb, and the core temperature also broke through the subcritical temperature of 1,000 degrees. In just two minutes, the engine thrust jumped directly 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 cannot see the wake itself at all.

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

Aside from a slight shake in the engine structure, it's impossible to even tell from the looks of it that it's started.

"It's about to reach 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, if necessary, we can run the engine in supercritical conditions?"

"Yes, but it is easy to enter the supercritical state, and 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 eyes to the screen again.

As judged by Ye Zhou, the thrust of this engine finally stabilized at 120 tons, and after running for more than ten minutes, the engine began to enter the shutdown process.

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

It was not until the end of the final finishing inspection 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 a nuclear-powered engine ended without any disturbance, but the sensation it caused around the world was like a huge wave.

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

"Cold War monsters come back to life, and the Eastern Evil Dragon regains its forbidden art!"

"The artificial sword of Damocles, the hilt has been cast!"

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

"A 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 the report from Maoxiong is the most normal.

"Figure 95lal's glory is recast, and the red giant bird is about to fly!"