Obviously if China wants to buy one the fact that they want to reverse engineer its technology is going to be patently obvious.
Even if China could get a hold of an AN-225 reverse engineering one is a huge task, and at best you only know exactly what this hardware did, not what they avoided, or good ideas they didn't pursue purely due to resource constraints etc.
So what happens instead is that a state like China approaches the Ukraine for a manufacturing agreement like the one described in the article. China hands over a lot of money which covers not just the planes but also the tech, and job are created in the Ukraine as a result.
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/june-2015-online/jewel-...
Also cool to hear them talking about automating as much stuff as possible to remove human error. Incidentally that's also how we go about software release processes where I work.
Nit-pick, but single crystals can (and do) still have defects. Your point about single crystal turbine blades being awesome I agree with completely though :)
This is why it's easy to lose the ability to produce something e.g. the big rockets that NASA used to make.
China can make a copy of the engine but it would not gain sufficient insight into why they chosen to design it exactly as it did so making adjustments would not be very easy or possible at all without putting almost as much R&D effort into it as making a whole new engine from scratch and debugging things would also be near impossible.
There is a reason why there are only a few engine manufacturers in the world, it's very hard work, and as far as big engines go then only RR and GE are really in the game.
IIRC, to avoid this when they shut down F-22 production, they crated a huge number of DVDs documenting every step of the manufacturing process, so that knowledge wouldn't be totally lost.
China has the luxury of being able to play catch up by purchasing technology. Why spend the next 20 years trying to develop it when you can pay Ukraine who already has the expertise/product and probably gave the Chinese a deal. It's just smart business.
China apparently did something similar with BMW. They bought a BMW factory in Brazil (I think) for a couple of billion and disassembled it piece by piece and moved it to China. It saved them years of figuring out the how to of high tech auto engine manufacturing.
Link to Story:
Lest you think I would only throw stones at my former employer, Airbus has been doing that and more. They are actually doing final assembly in China.
Designing and building modern turbofan engines is incredibly dependent on your mastery of materials science and fabrication. These are areas of science and engineering that are notoriously "art like" or even "black magic like". The accrued knowledge that sits in Rolls-Royce or GE or Pratt-Witney don't really exist in textbooks, and they aren't taught in classes either. This knowledge and know how was generated over 60 years of trial and error, and are jealously guarded, not just by the manufacturers, but also by their governments.
Things to consider: modern turbine blades are already pushing the absolute edge of lightweight-temperature resistant materials. And then modern designs will run these blades at temperatures that are nominally above the material failure point, because we've come up with ways to cool the structures. Oh, and the temperature resistant alloys in use? Secret. Empirically determined, and likely unique.
Once you get into materials and fabrication, having a finished example to examine is rarely going to lead to a big win. If the secret sauce is in the fabrication (HOW do you make a single crystal blade? HOW do you inflate corrugated titanium? HOW do get this type of grain structure with this nickel-iron-manganese mix? HOW do you get a laser weld in this impossible again?), then a single example isn't -THAT- useful.
Reversing engineering a modern turbofan(remember, the basic principles of turbofans are well known) is more akin to reverse engineering Intel's fab process by peaking at a finished i7 (with AFM and electron microscopes) than reverse engineering say... a sensor fusion module once you get the assembly code.
Which is why the technology transfer associated with the engine deal is a big deal. It should (I mean, its possible that the terms are all fucked up) give the Chinese an oppourtunity to learn all of these hows and whys (albeit for a slightly dated design, but still a relatively modern one).
Similar to razor blades and little balls that go into writing pens. Few companies can make them well. China has to import little balls from Japan (at least for high quality pens).
Sending over work instructions will help (somewhat). China will need veterans of the process to work with local Chinese vendors, explaining how to do each step.
The Ukrainian staff will resist handing over their work babies. Also, the subcontractors (heat treaters, metal workers) will not hand over their secret sauce.
China will figure it out eventually. This will help. Still many years away from mastering it though. They will have to source from Ukraine for quite a while.
In the field of fluid and thermodynamics? Probably quite a bit. This is why I tried to emphasize the materials and fabrication bit.
For example, several current models of Russian helicopters and military ships rely on engines made only in Ukraine, and the recent conflict and disruption of the military industrial complex (which used to and still is rather connected between Ukraine and Russia) has caused delays in producing these craft since you can't really replicate it easily, it takes a lot of time, skill and effort.
Also, lots of military rocket manufacture (from shoulder-operated to very large SAM) was and is located in Ukraine. Together with their rather large nuclear industry (currently civilian, but they used to manufacture warheads as well, plus the missile and guidance systems) they probably could be a first-rate nuclear power with MIRV ICBMs if there was a political will to make it so again.
I think the Soviet Union physically based a good chunk of its military industry in Ukraine, which the country then inherited when it became independent. So when we talk about Ukraine in this context, we're talking about a former superpower.