As noted at a meeting with students of the Kazan National Research Technical University named after A. N. Tupolev — KAI by the managing director of Tupolev, bench tests of the PD-8 engine were successful.
However, it later turned out that the engine still needed to be refined.
We hoped it would be in December 2023. Everything is great on the bench. We put it on a flying laboratory, it was normal for a while, and then processes started that could not be foreseen on the bench. We are now urgently finalizing it.
Earlier it became known that UEC-Saturn had figured out how to speed up certification for the PD-8. Part of the full-scale tests will be replaced by a computer modeling stage on a digital twin of the engine. Computer modeling allows virtual testing of both individual components of the power plant and the system as a whole.
It can, for example, check how the engine will react to a bird or other object inside or cope with icing and other adverse atmospheric conditions. These and other checks are faster than similar bench tests and will speed up engine certification without negatively affecting its safety.
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