Great Power Technology

When the situation in the South Island began to surge, Ye Zhou finally waited for the first ground test of a nuclear-powered aircraft launch that he had longed for.

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

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

At ten o'clock in the morning, all preparations have been completed on the ground test bench, and the engine has been hoisted on the shelf. Due to the special nature of the engine fuel, even the oil pipeline has been omitted this time, except for the circuit used to control the aerospace reactor core. In addition, a purely mechanical emergency stopping device was installed on the location that originally belonged to the oil pipeline.

This device is independent of the control system of the aircraft engine itself. In the event 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 generated by fission in the core will be leaked. Therefore, in order to avoid nuclear radiation contamination, the test bed this time was actually sealed in a huge cement coffin. In case of an accident, preparations were made on the periphery. The engineering troops will seal the entire cement coffin and bury it, completely abandoning this nuclear-powered aviation prototype.

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 embodies their hard work for more than two years, but also represents the first major achievement of the Nantianmen project.

If the nuclear-powered aviation engine succeeds, Jinwu's biggest difficulty will be solved; if it fails, the progress of the entire Jinwu project will be slowed down.

Sitting in the conference room, Ye Zhou nervously watched the pictures on the screen. The staff who were busy doing final inspections had begun to evacuate. The heavy radiation isolation door of the test bench workshop was closed. The engine entered the simulation operation inspection stage. After the inspection was completed, After that, once the control rods are pulled out, the core will quickly enter a critical state.

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

In essence, this is an engine that uses nuclear fuel heat to replace fossil fuel heat. The nuclear core replaces the original combustion chamber. The so-called "combustion" changes from direct to indirect, but the basic principle is not actually the same. No changes have occurred.

Therefore, the technical achievements achieved 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 then that Ye Zhou discovered that the scientific and technological achievements he had obtained in previous simulations, especially those in the field of materials science, actually played a greater role than he had imagined.

"So, if this engine is so big, how will it be installed on an aircraft? According to what you told me before, the thrust of an engine is only about 100 tons at most. Judging from Jinwu's current design drawings , it requires at least 400 tons of thrust, how to arrange the 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 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 the parts is the reactor part, which functions as the 'core combustion chamber'. Here, the heat heats the air flowing in from the intake duct, and then discharges it through the pipeline into the real 'engine'. "

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

"As long as the heat generated by the nuclear reactor is enough, theoretically, a reactor can be equipped with more than eight 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, does such a small reactor have enough heat?"

"Theoretically, it is enough. This reactor core uses a fifth-generation miniaturized thorium-based molten salt reactor. Its thermal efficiency exceeds the mainstream Rankine cycle by more than 60%, and its operating temperature reaches a maximum of 1,600 degrees. It is very different from traditional combustion-type aircraft engines. On par.”

"More importantly, the reactor you see now is small compared to the power reactors you have seen. In fact, the size of the 'combustion chamber' of this aerospace engine system is larger than the size of 10 Qilian engines combined. Be big.”

"So, there is no problem at all when it drives the turbofan engine at the rear end. The problem is just that the gas expansion rate is smaller than that of chemical combustion."

"This defect can only be overcome by quantity."

"To sum up, instead of worrying about the thrust issue, it is better to worry about the air intake issue. 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 Problem to be solved today.”

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

As he spoke, 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 nozzle ejected 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. Whenever he encountered a question that he did not understand, he would ask directly.

"Now is the warm-up stabilization stage. The heat exchange device of a nuclear power engine is very complex. It is impossible to control a stable combustion temperature by controlling the fuel injection volume 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 each circuit needs to be stable. This is also the biggest problem with nuclear energy engines - it cannot start in time."

"It is for this reason that the Golden Crow is designed to be so large, because after it takes off once, it is destined to maintain aerial cruising for a long time. The time it stays on the ground is actually very short."

"It may be as short as less than 10 minutes. Landing, crew change, takeoff, it's that simple."

It really is the sun that never sets.

Hearing this, Chen Hao thought secretly in his heart.

As time passed, the engine warm-up state finally ended, and the thrust data displayed on the screen began to slowly rise. 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 current traditional engines.

But neither Ye Zhou nor Chen Hao were satisfied with this result, because they had both seen the Qilian engine break through 140 tons of thrust in its first test run.

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

Ye Zhou shook his head and replied:

"Theoretically, if the load-bearing capacity of each engine module is not considered, the power output by the core is enough to push the thrust of this engine to more than 300 tons. However, 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 in response to his words, the launch and thrust data continued to climb, and the core temperature also exceeded the sub-critical 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 status of multiple machines connected in parallel. However, the strange thing is that everyone can clearly see the light distorted by the high-temperature airflow, but they cannot see the wake itself at all.

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

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

"We are almost reaching the limit - when the temperature reaches 1,600 degrees, it is close to the critical temperature of the thorium-based molten salt reactor. We must leave a certain safety margin."

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

"You're saying we can run the engine supercritically if necessary?"

"Yes, but it is easy to enter the supercritical state, but 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.

Just as Ye Zhou had judged, the thrust of the engine finally stabilized at 120 tons. After running for more than ten minutes, the engine began to shut down.

An hour later, the engine was turned off, the radiation test 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 bed workshop.

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

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

…

The first test run of the nuclear power engine ended without any incident, but the sensation it caused around the world was like a huge wave.

That night, as the test results were announced, pieces of sensational news began to appear on the front pages of international media.

"The Cold War monster is back, and the Eastern dragon has regained its forbidden skills!"

"The man-made Sword of Damocles, the hilt has been forged!"

"With the breakthrough of the Golden Crow project, how big is China's ambition?"

“Is nuclear power engine good news or bad news?”

"The products from hell are about to fly to the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of the East is actually the kingdom of Satan?"

…..

Among this series of reports, only the one from the Furry Bear Country is the most normal.

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