NBD News: Driven by huge investments and advanced development systems, single crystal blades containing rhenium for aero engines are expected to take the lead in breakthroughs.

Ping An Securities research report stated that the "two aircraft special project" will invest huge sums of money in the short term: developing aviation, power first. The research and development expenses of American aviation engines (including model development and improvement, modification) account for about 25% of the research and development expenses of the entire aviation industry.

The pre-research costs for engines that are not specific to specific models account for about 35% of the total research and development costs. Pratt & Whitney invested a total of US$8.4 billion for the F135 engine developed for the F-35 fighter. It is expected that the investment scale of the "two aircraft special project" (a major national aero engine and gas turbine science and technology project) to be disclosed is expected to reach 100 billion yuan, the cycle may be shortened to less than 10 years, and the investment intensity will be greatly increased. According to Reuters, China will eventually invest as much as US$300 billion in the engine field in the next 20 years. It can be seen that China has invested funds that can maintain the research and development of a number of advanced performance jet engines and large turbofan engines at the same time.

Establish a new system, emphasizing the independent development of core engines: the "trilogy" of US aviation engine development: pre-research engineering, core engine planning, and engine serialization. With reference to the US IHPTET plan ("Comprehensive High-Performance Turbine Engine Technology Plan"), it is expected that the "two-engine special project" will focus on requirements for independent development of core engines, strengthening of pre-research, and product serialization to achieve major changes in engine production methods. In this way, different aircraft can be equipped with standardized and serialized core aircraft, completely subverting the old model of engine models catching up with aircraft models. This is also conducive to mass production manufacturers to save costs, reduce the difficulty of maintenance, and increase the matching rate.

mobilize all forces, turbine single crystal blades are expected to take the lead in breaking through. It is expected that the "two-machine project" will first increase investment support in turbine blade materials, and it is not limited to enterprises within the traditional military industry system. It may broadly support various market entities including civilian technology enterprises and private enterprises. The goal is to achieve Localization of single crystal blades. The progress of aero-engine mainly depends on its thrust-to-weight ratio index, and the key is the temperature-bearing capacity of the blade material. Every time the turbine inlet temperature increases by 100, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the aero engine can increase by about 10%. From 1965 to 1985, the turbine inlet temperature increased by an average of 15 per year, of which the contribution of materials was about 7. The realization of the American IHPTET plan, 70%-80% comes from the improvement of materials. In addition, 50% of the cost of aero-engine parts comes from the material itself. At present, almost all advanced foreign aero-engines use the third-generation nickel-based single crystal alloy containing 5% rhenium as the main material of turbine blades. The average life of aero-engine turbine blades is 10 years, and the peak of the second-generation third-generation single-crystal blades is coming soon, and the consumption of monolithic rhenium will double. Regardless of the change in the number of blades of a single engine, the demand for rhenium in the international civil aviation engine market will increase by 211% in 2017 over 2011, with a compound annual growth rate of 16%.