Chapter 254 Air Police 200, Wedge Tail Antenna
Although what Liang Shaoxiu said was not wrong, this plot development was something Chang Haonan never expected.
It seems that due to word-of-mouth spread by insiders in the aviation industry, the speed and scope of the spread of his reputation are beyond imagination.
This is also a good thing. The higher his reputation, the easier it will be to achieve the goal he set at the beginning of his rebirth.
Besides, as a normal person, Chang Haonan's mood naturally improved a lot after hearing others make such comments about himself.
As for Wang Xiaomo's problem...
For him, this is not even a problem.
After all, the Air Police 200 in the previous life was designed on the basis of the Y8 III platform.
Now, after a round of additional improvements, the Y-8F-400 far exceeds the former in all aspects of performance, especially safety and low-speed maneuverability. Naturally, it is more suitable for use as a special aircraft, including early warning aircraft. machine platform.
Of course, if the plan that Chang Haonan designed with Ding Gaoheng can be completed normally, then after entering the new century, China should be able to complete the design improvement and localization of the Tu 204/214 passenger aircraft. At that time, there would be no need for Yun 8, a veteran, to continue to play the leading role.
Therefore, there should not be as many models using Category 3 platforms in the end as in previous generations.
But these are all things for later. At present, we can only consider building a dojo inside the snail shell of Yun 8.
From the perspective of hindsight, the design of the Air Police 200 is not perfect, and there are still many areas that can be improved.
And this just leaves room for Chang Haonan, who is not satisfied with simply reproducing previous designs.
The only thing he needs to determine is the current level of China's radar technology.
The electronics industry is already developing at a fast pace. Just because the 14th Institute of Electrical Engineering in 2002 was able to build an early warning aircraft radar does not mean that the 14th Institute of Electrical Engineering in 1997 could also do it.
Therefore, after a brief hesitation, Chang Haonan still did not do everything, and chose a relatively cautious response:
"Although I am very grateful to Liang Gong and Academician Wang for your support of me. Trust me, but I definitely need some more detailed information before I can make a judgment on this kind of thing.”
“The core of the early warning aircraft is ultimately the radar, and the Y-8 platform does have a lot of modifications from a structural and aerodynamic perspective. There is potential, but whether it can be implemented depends on whether the Electronic Technology Group can come up with a sufficiently compact radar."
At this point, he paused and added another example:
"For example, a disc-shaped radome with a diameter of more than ten meters like the ring project you just mentioned cannot be installed on the Yun-8. It is too big."
Although there is no direct guarantee. , but Wang Xiaomo still noticed a very positive meaning from Chang Haonan's tone and attitude.
It shows that the feasibility of modifying the early warning aircraft is actually very high in the latter's mind.
It is only because of the instinctive rigor of the engineers that they did not give a direct conclusion.
This made Chang Haonan’s evaluation in Wang Xiaomo’s heart even higher——
After all, he is an academician of the Electronic Science and Technology Group, and he has not intuitively felt the other party's abilities like Du Yishan and others.
Although he had Liang Shaoxiu's endorsement, after meeting him today, the young academician still felt a little guilty because of the young man in front of him.
Engineering is not the same as theoretical research. On the one hand, it requires experience, and on the other hand, it also requires a calm mind.
Both of these often need to grow slowly over time.
Somewhat similar to doctors and teachers, an image that is too young always makes people feel unreliable at first.
Now, Chang Haonan has at least proven that he has no shortcomings in the latter aspect.
Trust is built step by step in this way.
“This is what I think about the design of the radar antenna.”
Wang Xiaomo took out a few pieces of paper from the briefcase he carried with him, obviously prepared:
"Based on our current technical level, in order to ensure that the radar has a detection range of about 300 kilometers for a target with an RCS of 5 square meters, about 2,000 T/R components are needed, uh... small Chang, you should know what a T/R component is, right?”
Seeing Chang Haonan nodding, he continued:
"Combined with the packaging process, if you want to arrange these two thousand T/R components on an array, the size must be 8.5* 0.6m, in this case, as you just said, the structure of the disc radome and the three-sided array will definitely not work.”
Speaking of which, Wang Xiaomo calculated the antenna size on the first page. Turning it over, the second page of the overall plan was revealed. As expected, it was exactly what Chang Haonan was familiar with.
But he still had to pretend to be slightly surprised:
"Is it a balance beam antenna?"
"Yes, in fact, the Saab 340 early warning aircraft that the Swedes first flew two years ago already used such a structure. Although there are 60° blind spots directly in front and behind the aircraft, The antenna can be installed vertically on the aircraft, and the weight of the entire antenna structure can be reduced to less than 1 ton, which should be more convenient for your aircraft design department.”
“If it is an 8.5-meter antenna, it will be installed like this. It should be acceptable."
Seeing that the heat was almost over, Chang Haonan was ready to reveal the more complete plan:
"But I have a slightly different idea."
Sure enough, Wang Xiaomo showed an interesting expression:
“Let’s talk about it.”
“Actually, I was also paying attention to some Saab 340 situations at the time, so I did some things in my spare time. Calculate."
Chang Haonan picked up a pen from the side, and at the same time Guo Lin also placed a piece of paper in front of him.
Hand the paper to the boss.jpg
There is no such thing as paying attention to the Saab 340AEW. This model first flew in 1994. At that time, Chang Haonan had not yet been reborn. He was just a sophomore who worked hard but had average talent.
It’s just that this kind of thing is obviously what he said.
“First of all, even in terms of the balance beam design, Saab’s plan is terrible. They chose a radar cabin bracket plan that has the greatest adverse impact on the aircraft.”
While speaking, Chang Hao Nan waved his pen and drew several different radar installation methods on the paper.
“The directional stability derivative of the plan A bracket selected by Saab 340AEW is positive and has an unstable effect, but this situation will not occur in the other three plans.”
"But the point I want to say is not this, but this type of balance beam antenna. No matter how it is designed, it cannot avoid the bracket causing side wash at the vertical tail, interfering with the direction of the vertical tail flow, and at the same time, the blocking effect of the bracket is reduced. Regarding the incoming flow speed on the vertical tail, it can be said that the damage caused by this bracket to the directional stability is even greater than that of the radar antenna itself."
"Is this true?"
For those who are not majored in aviation. For people, this conclusion does sound a bit counter-intuitive at first, but the problem of aerodynamics is like this, and some inconspicuous small places matter a lot.
"That's right."
Chang Haonan nodded, and the movement of drawing lines on his hand was also very fast:
"To make up for this loss of stability, we not only need to design two large ventral fins on the tail, but also consider raising the vertical tail part. If it is a large aircraft like the IL-76, that's it, but the Y-8 has the largest The take-off weight is only 60 tons. After modification, it will have a great impact on the structure, and further adjustments to the airframe will be required. This workload will be too much."
"So we might as well relax our thinking and don't do it at all. This obstructive bracket directly connects the radar array to the fuselage, allowing the antenna itself to serve as a supporting structure. This will have less impact on directional stability and bring less resistance, and it will also gain a larger array area. In addition, a 'hat'-like structure can be added to the side-view antenna to install two antenna arrays in the front and rear directions. Although the performance is certainly not comparable to that of the side view, it can at least achieve 360° full coverage."
"Although this will still have some impact, it can be offset by adding two ventral fins, and there is almost no need to make major modifications to the overall structure of the aircraft."
Painting is something that practice makes perfect, because During this period, he often used similar methods to present plans, so the things he drew now were at least less abstract.
At least Wang Xiaomo can understand it at a glance.
In fact, the plan proposed by Chang Haonan is basically the "wedge tail" antenna of the previous American E737 early warning aircraft. It can be regarded as a comprehensive upgrade of the traditional balance beam plan.
The only disadvantage is that the weight of the wedge tail structure is much larger than that of the balance beam, so it cannot be installed on a platform that is too small.
However, perhaps the only advantage of Yun-8 as a special aircraft platform is that the load capacity is large enough.
The Boeing 737 has a load capacity of 16 tons, and the Yun-8 can carry 20 tons.
More than a few hundred kilograms is not a problem at all.
In short, if the Air Police 200 can use this design in advance, it will definitely bring huge performance improvements.
Good news for pilots too.
You know, early warning aircraft are generally not easy to fly.
(End of this chapter)