Successful Test Flight of China’s J-31 with New Powerful WS-13E Engine

China’s J-31 stealth fighter jet. Photo from war.163.com’s report

Chinese website mil.163.com says in its report today that China’s fighter jet engine producer Liyang Company sent a public message on July 1 on the successful first flight of an aircraft installed with a certain type of engine the company has developed.

The company’s great excitement at the success makes the website speculate that it was the test flight of a J-31 installed with new WS-13E engines that are improved version of WS-13 with greater thrust.

The aircraft took off at 9:53 am and landed at 10:01 am along designated route and did the climbing and flight according to schedule. During the 7 minutes 33 seconds flight, all the parameters of the engine remain normal and the engine worked stably.

According to the report, in 2012 China developed FWS-13 on the basis of Russian RD-93 to increase its thrust with augmentation to about 8,500 kg. The engine was successfully tested on a J-31, but the thrust is still not enough.

On April 22, 2016, Liyang’s holding company announced that it is investing 961 million yuan (US$171 million) in Liyang to build a production line of third-generation medium thrust aircraft engines including WS-13E with reduced weight and increased augmented thrust.

The report bares the secret data of improved WS-13. It says that its weight will be reduced from 1,135 kg to 1,050 kg but its maximum augmented thrust will be increased from about 8,700 kg to more than 9,000 kg to raise its thrust-to-weight ratio to 8.8.

Source: war.163.com “Speculation of successful first flight of a J-31 with more powerful thrust-augmentation type WS-13E engine” (summary by Chan Kai Yee based on the report in Chinese)

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