Bharat Rakshak

Austin, AFAIK - the engines don't have to be exact replicas, even the M88.3 (9ton variant) is certainly heavier than the bitty M882s that currently power the Rafale. IOWs, the French were willing to stick a much larger/powerful engine into the Rafale had the UAE deal gone through - so why not the Kaveri a few years down the road?

Yes, it is not flightworthy as of today, but it should allow for the Snecma-GTRE variant a degree of confidence to begin with.

CM.

notice the red GTRE on side of the A/c

If Kaveri can scale up in thrust and scale down in weight, then India has a killer engine. We can replace, starting with a very few and select fighters, the existing engines with Kaveri. Then depending on our experience we can extend this to most of IAF aircrafts. The cost savings would be enormous. Add to it that we would be safe from any probable denial due to sanctions or some other tom-dick-harry reason. For example post 1971, Iran was denied essential spares and engine parts for their F-14s. We would not face a similar situation.

65kN figure is definitely wrong. If this was true than there would have been no point in testing the engine on the Il-76 as it failed in its primary goal to generate 80+kN wet thrust. And the people in charge in their sound mind would have never gone on to spend so much on a mere flame thrower.

Meanwhile does anybody know how much India is paying to Russia for these test ?


Bold but impossible. The only aircraft which can get the Kaveri is probably the MiG-29 which is undergoing upgrades and we have singed contract to produce its engines.

Well they have to be dimensionally similar to M88 and should be as reliable as M88 if not more , I am looking at more of IAF perspective if they think of getting Kaveri on Rafale , but its a long shot as we do not know if Rafale will make in.


I think they have not yet finalised on Snecma deal and if P Rajkumar is to be believe the Kaveri-Snecma deal will end up powering the MCA , if that deal goes through.

This was stated in one the news items linked earlier. It costs 60 crores in Russia while setting up facilities in India would be some hundreds of crores (IIRC)

Can some one confirm this ? What is the latest AB Thrust ?

One would hope so shiv, but I haven't read of any funds being sanctioned yet. Perhaps the team is fully occupied with Snecma integration.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what India gains from this SNECMA joint venture? If they are bringing in their own core what the hell have we gained. We are stuck with an engine which is putting out an extremely anemic wet thrust. The latest Umrikhan engines for the F-16 are putting out 32,000++ lbs of thrust with afterburners.

While we can buy weapons from Umrikha and France at exorbitant rates, there is not enough money to set up test facilities for the Kaveri in India at a measly 400 crores!! Whatever resources are needed to make a usable engine have to be provided. India can never be an independent aerospace power and have to import a fighter's engine. Whoever the MMRCA contract goes to MUST help India in this effort. That will make the contract worth every cent. Given the state of the Oiropean economy, I think both the Eurofighter consortium and France can be made to play ball. Giving this contract to Umrikah would, IMHO, be treason.

perhaps the intention is to get Snecma to make kaveri fit for AMCA but also **finally** setup the test and r&d facilities to play in tier-1, hook more into the supplier network, develop domestic industry also for 1000s of small parts and get the gap-fillers and missing knowledge needed to modify the basic kaveri and also new engines in the 120kn class. atleast I hope so...because just getting Snecma to make an engine fit for AMCA is useless in long term.

GOI has to release lot of money for this and also lot of diplomacy with the EU ... with as much alacrity as paid to the russians/americans.

in terms of financially weak but capable collaborator Snecma is the right choice vs GE who always get chara/dana to eat from GOTUS

I would spend couple of 100 crores for such setup rather spend 60 c every time in Russia. But, I don't want to kill the golden goose now.

it helps if one has some basic idea of what he is talking about. comparing thrust figures of two engines in completely different class is absolutely meaningless.

we are probably talking 10 yrs and expenses in range of $500mil-1b to setup world class facilities in a new GTRE-nuova campus and associated airfield (aka Ramenskoye-halli) and affiliated specialized test and design labs in places like DRDO metallury units, iiSc, iits, nits, tifr etc etc. germany and russia seem to have good facilities overall for such ventures. in concert the local talent has to be developed and returning talent/expats recruited. money can no longer be allowed to act as a brake...just as money was allocated as needed for nuclear weapons and missile programs...having a capable turbofan engine family *IS* a strategic calling card and door opener of the 1st order. you make one good engine and 10 people will be lining up next morning to sell you all the consultancy, parts and Tot needed to make the next one. until then everything is maya.

it has to be a national mission with clear directive from PMO level led by a person of great program management and networking skills to keep the files moving in the bowels of babudom and cut red tape.

I hope PM and DM understands the stratigic requirement of having our own jet eng and involve/support the efforts at least from now onwards.

There has been this issue about reliability and time.

This effort has started to clear the first. Time still remains an issue. Building test facilities and THEN have qualified people takes years.

Remember that it will take some 100 more flights to build on test data - just for this engine. This is just the start, not the end of this engine. Then every time a change is made to this engine the entire cycle to collect data has to restart. (Which is what a consultant - SNECMA - brings to the table (assuming they will share some of their data, which I doubt they will doubt))

India has a very long way to go. I would think another 15-20 years to mature.

Since it has been successfully flown, we can't push this baby to growing at its pace rather provide the require multi vits and growth hormones in terms of more investments into various technology it needs - blisk/sc blades, coatings, etc. We must invest more in Kaveri versions and speed up this baby. It is quite important now than earlier.

My point about the F-16 engine was to show how much farther we still need to travel. The F-16 blk 1 had a weight 0f less than 8.5 tons and was easily considered a light weight fighter. Its F100-PW-200 engine put out 29,000 lbs (106 KN) of wet thrust in 1977. As the F-16 put on weight its successive engines gained thrust but not in proportion to the weight increase.

In 2010 we have a ?65 KN wet thrust engine in a ?6.5 ton LCA. Obviously a lot of work needs to be done. BTW maybe you could provide me a dissertation on statistical thermodynamics so I would know more what I am talking about.

In fact, creating the test facilities is the easy part and can be completed on time. If indeed GTRE asked for money to create test facilities, and they were not given the money, then it means that the ADA (or government bean counters) never seriously believed that the GTRE could be successful.

To their credit, they have persevered so far, when the logical thing to do would have been to pack up shop and work for General Electric until test facilities were made funded.

Compare the size and weight of F100-PW-200 to that of Kaveri. Is the challenge of developing X KN thrust remain the same regardless of the size of engine?

No one will argue that Kaveri still has a long way to go. In fact, this is exactly what every member is posting. It is your comparison of engines of totally different classes which some members are taking exception to. This is because if we go by your comparison, even modern engines like GE-414 and EJ-200 should be considered as failures.

Gaur boss, I think we all are happy that GTRE has come up with a functioning gas turbine engine, an accomplishment very few countries can brag about but that we still have many miles to go. My last comment on this.

come to the physics thread and I will give you a primer on statistical thermodynamics if you want. although I'm not sure it would help you much in these matters. a little common sense is all that is required.
it doesn't take an engine expert to understand that 2000 kg engine powering a 20 tonne jet should not be compared on raw thrust data alone with a 1100 kg engine powering a 13.5 tonne jet.
tell me, is a D-30 more advanced than a EJ200 ?
no one's arguing that but the process by which you arrived at this is completely misleading.

Kaveri engine journey is eternal just like the river its named after.
The reason I said AUX power application is start making the thing even if it is over kill, we get experience in manufacturing technologies right now the averi we have is just out of the crucible from labs we want ingots from a (like steel ) plant.

Many a spin off applications can be thought of once something is made on regular basis.

yes Miles to go before we sleep...

I say we start setting up manufacturing facilities simultaneous ly for component by component by the time the design is stabilized and the processes fine tuneed ( Cruicble to commercial is itself a huge challenge, many a productand project have failed, Arjun, Awac, SUbs you name it..)

DRDO is doing the right thing this time with regard's to the 1500 horsepower powerpack for the FMBT. They are getting the acedemics, private industry, foreign consultants on board from the word go. They seem to have learned from their mistakes.

GTRE needs to do the same for the next version of the kaveri- beyond the K-10. The engine to power the AMCA should have thrust vectoring factored in from the word go.

No I just want a basic working simple Jet Engine first we are way behind in time .. Just get something like Mig-21 mas produced while concurrently work on esoteric technologies.
ISRO did the same thing instead of going Kerosene route they took Cryo engine route. Should have stuck to Kerosene and LOX

Is it? I heard people complaining after recent failure, ISRO should have attempted sem-cryo route before taking the Cryo route as Semi-Cryo is much earier.

Are we going to test only one engine only once?

So when we improve Kaveri, we go to Russians once again?

When kaveri JV engine comes, we again go back to Russians or errr French?

When ucav engine, back again?

AMCA back again?

MRTA engine, some time?

AJT engine?

Turboprop engines for RTA? etc etc and each engine may need a multiple series of tests to improve the engine. There is no alternative but to build the labs in india.

Well, like the story of not measuring airframe stress and building a database for Marut and Kiran, this is yet another milestone in the shoddiness and half hearted manner aerospace development has taken place in India. Even today we lose years if not decades for not investing in all this.

To put things in prespective, initial budget for Kaveri was US$ 89 millon dollars in 1989 which is equivalent to US$ 133 million in 2005. While in 2005 US$ 350 plus US$ 65 i.e. three times the amount was assigned to Russians to give/develp for India a trailing edge engine for IJT called AL-55 which has turned out to be overweight.

Even today our budget for Kaveri is only around US$ 500million while we are ready to give Frenchies around US$ 2500 million to borrow their M88 label. Note In early eighties France spend around US$ 2Billion to develop & produce M88

We give AMCA around US$ 800-1200 million compared to US$ 6000 million for PAKFA

We give Akash missile US$ 50 million in 1983 equivalent to US$ 100million in 2005 compared to Barak-2 missile which gets around US$ 350 million in 2005.

We assign initial amount of Rs. 50 lakhs (yes, no typo) to develop engines for UAVs.


"Low Initial" funding means that basic reserach and LABS never get done and we run around with begging bowls in hand for basic assistance from others. I have no problem if we buy US$ 4 Billion needless C-17s from USA but can we not assign, say, US$ 500 million to build adequate type of labs for various engine programmes???????????

Note we will spend US$ 4 Billion on US planes rather than just building better roads, note the Chinese, no C-17s but way better military posture and infrastructure.

^^^.

Based on the post by Vic,

Just one question. How much of the capital outlay of any engine project or any complex project for the matter is a function of the HR expenses.

Ie the Indian Human resources expense is less then say that of the Yanks and the Euros or even the Ruskies. That should make the project cheaper to run in the country. Considering the raw material costs remain the same. Right. Or am I missing some thing.

The reason I ask this is becaues when we are comparing the project costs of the domestic and foriegn projects we believe that the capital outlay for the project is anemic in India.

How true is that perception?

I am a wee bit uncomfortable about snecma core. They will suck away money from us without us getting any tangible benefit out of it. Where are we so many years after so-called partnership with shakti?

They will help here and there but will ensure that we do not get our hands on stuff that will eventually propel us in their league.

As vina said, start working on a 120 KN now, drawing off the experience from kaveri. Else, we will forever be dependent on others for critical technology. The chances of kaveri powering IAF version are very slim anyway. Why not let it be the launch pad for bigger things to come? Strategic thinking has always been our weak spot, isn’t it?

GTRE has to shoulder a large part of the blame here. It is they who pushed for the tie up with Snecma while the IAF wanted them to go it alone and learn more.

In a major R&D Project roughly 30-40% can be manpower cost. Some capital cost can be saved by fabricating labs in India but an Indian project cannot be cheaper than 50-60% of a contemporary world project and not less than 40% to 50% of trailing edge project. But in India we have to add cost for starting ground up from basics. Therefore real indigenous 100kn TVC Kaveri cannot be got at less than US$ 3-5 Billion dollars.

Its five pages thread and we are not yet sure what was tested, and what does it mean to India!

Vina or someone take the time to assess what all this means? And where is the project in terms of milestones?

Rahulda,
I'll take you up on this offer... could help this Noob learn some gyan on the modern aero-engines.

err bala, I know nothing to very little about modern aero-engines !
the offer was about statistical thermodynamics ! (which AFAIK is not even required for most aero engines. classical thermodynamics and fluid dynamics is all that is needed)

I think India should start an LCA MK3 program parallel to MK2 program. The MK3 should be a twin engine modified LCA powered by Kaveri, with the indigenous MMR radar and armed with Astra. It should basically be an assimilation of technologies that we have developed or are reasonably expected to develop in the next 5 years. Imagine such an indigenous LCA 5 years from, it would be a tremendous morale boost to DRDO and it labs and also the Indian armed forces.

^^^ What role do you want to see Tejas Mark III in. How will it be any different from designing MCA?

Not true. If you stick with "classical" thermodynamics and fluid mechanics with linear approximations, all you will get is a 1970s vintage engine.

As Grand Mullah Enqyoob-ud-din -e- Gas Turbine pointed out multiple times, the state of the art has moved far far beyond that kind of elementary /K-12 kind of stuff.

You do have 3-D inviscid flow design using cutting edge CFD codes and yes, you get deep into statistical thermodynamics for stuff like combustion (mixing of fuel and air), high temperature gas dynamics (for eg, what vibration modes are the molecules of the exhaust in, are you lowering the speed of the exhaust by using some of that energy to excite those molecules like Pakis doped up on Jihad) etc..

well the Tejas Mk2 itself imo should proceed on two tracks - the main tenure track being minimizing structural mods but packing in the new engine and sensors etc, while the PIG/RA track being longer fuselage and bigger wing to permit more fuel in fuselage and tank, stealthier weapons carrying stations in fuselage, a stealthy dual AAM housing for wing pylons....in general a longer ranged 'bombcat' thing with added benefit of better shaping. the lessons learnt in PIG track would feed into the AMCA and derisk certain crucial aspects....it wont be necessary to get more than 3-4 planes in that config flying...as prototypes and TDs...and yeah perhaps a more trapezoidal wing for higher top speed.