Can you gentlemen please cut out the Pinglish please?
As long as such unreasonable demands are addressed to any "gentlemenons" here, I have no problem onlee. LOOK at the quality of posts. There's
We should Adopt a New Paradigm, Refine a Strategic Plan, Think Globally and Out of The Box, Motivate Employees and Provide Only Top Class Facilities, Hire The Right People and Nurture Their Career Development, and Execute the Strategic Plan Tactically!
Meaning:
keep them in the dark, beat them regularly and feed them pu
And then look at the quality of technical insight in the Pingreji posts. Q.E.D. Besides, if we bring the discussion down to the level of Oxbridge Angreji, Sanku might participate!
Geeth: I too WANTED to believe this "flat-rated thrust" stuff - until I saw the values of bypass ratio and turbine inlet temperature. If thrust is zero, it is the theoretically ideal case of highest propulsion efficiency and flattest thrust rating, u know.... so this is a PR gimmick.
OK, Beloveds! With Vikram's posts, and vina's post, its now AhA! time. I finally "got it", and Drevin's post resonates cleanly off this titanium-hulled conclusion.
CONCLUSION:
The Kaveri engine SNAFU is the result of a huuuuuuuge misunderstanding:
No one told the GTRE that the LCA was actually supposed to fly!!!!
As excellent GOI Babus, they swore by the age-old maxim:
This too shall pass!
when the LCA RFP came out. They put in specs that they knew they could meet if push came to shove, as long as there was no flight testing involved. Since they had successfully dodged any effort to build world-class engine test facilities in India, they knew there was no danger of actually being asked to flight-test an engine unless there was a prototype aircraft flying, and no less an authority than Adm Nadkarni had been
loudly that the LCA should be cancelled, all through the 1990s.
GTRE were perfectly comfortable. Funding for Kaveri started at the equivalent of $82M, which paid for a lot of good boondoggles and Phakt-phinding trips and air fare regularly back and forth between B'lore and Dilli.
They provided an engine proposal that they knew, if push came to shove, could be met by buying an ancient 1970s turbojet engine from a junkyard. The Maldives Air Force probably has these in their recycling/ surplus center. They sugar-coated the 1700K T-i-T and the 21 pressure ratio (someone should try calculating the stage pressure ratio!) by claiming that this was 'isbeshially designed phor Indian condishuns, the harshest in the world' and that the low T-i-T was a great advantage for hot day takeoff (!!!!)
This was beautiful planning. When the LCA design was found not to "close" (weight too high, thrust too low, not enough structure fraction..) the project would be cancelled, but THEY (GTRE) would claim, as their Director DID so beautifully:
WE MET OUR SPECIFICATIONS!!!
This is classic aircraft design CYA. Any aerospace engineer who understands the Company Cross-(purposes)-Functional team Multidisciplinary LifeCycle Design Optimization will recognize this tactic instantly. No one would think to point out that the design did not CLOSE precisely because the engine only MET SPECIFICATIONS.
For instance, this is what happened to BOEING's entry in the Joint Strike Fighter competition circa 2005. They
MET SPECIFICATIONS, did CYA down the line, silenced all upstarts who wanted to try out this and that (like tailless designs for instance) and designed a VTOL fighter that would have been a great backup if the Harrier had not taken off successfully. In the 1960s. Is it THEIR fault that there was a Lockheed entry that took off vertically and flew supersonic on the first try?
In fact, GTRE may have been encouraged in this strategy, because the real point of the Kaveri engine's (vaporware turbine) specs was to get the sanctions relaxed to the GEF404 level. They succeeded, didn't they?
So the fault is REALLY ADA's. They hung on and actually MADE the LCA fly!
This, if you look carefully, is the source of all of GTRE's problems. Suddenly their pastoral pace was seen to be rather behind the schedule needed for an actual production engine to come out. There was mention of "high altitude flight tests" and "cold weather tests".
Reminds me of when I was to take my Project Viva Voce at the Ai Ai Tea. The day of the Big Event, I arrived sleep-deprived and shaking, to find out that my dear kind Project Guide was out of town. BUT, I was assured, the Acting Head of Department Himself ( and he was EXCELLENT at acting like he had something inside his head!) would be my examiner, AND, BONUS! The long-retired Ex-HOD was visiting, and HE would be sitting in as External Examiner. It went something like this:
me: Good morning.... yada yada yada ... experimental... yada yada yada
They (suddenly waking with a start): Did u say EXPERIMENTAL? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!
me: yadayadayadayada ..... .........................
They: "So how is yuwar daughter doing, is she finished MCOM this year? I am going to Mettupalayam for my sister's granddaughter's delivery next week, then blah-blah....
.. Sudden remembrance of me..
"No yaar, that will never work, it all looks very nice in calculation but it won't work like that in practice".
me: saar, but I have built a model.
THEY: "yes, my daughter is also taking her children for Bharatanatyam, it is the Arangettam of her eldest daughter next month and we have to go to Kancheepuram..
WHAT? You BUILT A MODEL? It will never work... they are coming back to Egmore next week onlee, appam parkkalaam...
me: Sir, the model works...
THEY: (now getting very annoyed with my stupidity): No, when you drive it at speed it will have too much friction, it will never work. So coming back to what my doctor said, he says I should take Chyavanapraasam, what do you think?
me: Would you like to come along with me and see the setup? It moves and turns corners, all with very little friction - it is self-stabilizing...
THEY: What? no no no no yaar, I am very busy onlee today, maybe some other time. So my eldest son's daughter has exams next month, and (yada yada yada)..
(10 minutes later)
me: Are we done, sir?
THEY: yes, besht shtore for buying sarees is... in Mylapore onlee, ennange, very reajonabal prices onlee! Huh! Oh,
you are still hiyar? you can go!
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Classic desi babucracy.
So... my concluding conclusion:
In India, R&D on jet engines is not run or led by anyone who is serious about advancing the technology of jet engines in India.
Recommendation: The development of a world-class capability to design and build advanced jet engines is absolutely critical to national security, and is worth hundreds of billions of dollars each year. This capability can be developed only through a coherent, determined program where the best of university and industry capabilities is carefully sought and brought in, with competition used to keep the pace of innovation high. This cannot be left any longer to GTRE/HAL as currently configured.
The power plants of their planes, tanks and ships are crucial elements of national security and protecting India's hard-won freedom. Putting these at the mercy of foreign governments, borders on treason. However, if Indians are serious about closing this vulnerability, they must insist on serious action from their government.
In Bangalore at present, the GTRE is the second-best of the two establishments nominally associated with gas turbine research - the first being the General Electric Jack E Welsh Research Center. US-based top GE executives take great pains to insist to US audiences and government agencies that that no critical research related to military systems ("Crown Jewels") actually happens inside the GE JEW RC (running codes to optimize sales proposals for maintenance upgrades, or responding to cusomer complaints, is not the leading edge of research. However, it appears that GTRE does little more than this at present, or for the past 20 years.
However, I do not recommend that GTRE be closed or disbanded. Instead, it should be expanded. The parts associated with routine development functions should be moved closer to the operations and manufacturing side of aircraft development programs, and senior personnel could be deputed to serve with engine factories in Nasik, Air force deployments in Leh and Tezpur, and in Rajasthan and in the Andaman/Nicobar islands, to better appreciate the Special Diversity of Indian Operating Conditions and provide their unique leadership. What remains in Bangalore should be a small core of dedicated researchers, charged with ensuring that India catches up and surpasses the rest of the world in all tecnologies that enable world-class propulsion systems.
OK, rahul, my LCA paper is done. Can I go back to learning the HoKo in the BENIS madarssa? No intell-e-jant lyeeoh hiyar onlee!....