prasadji:
originally planned to be powered by a foreign engine. When, in the late 80s, that failed, they dumped it on GTRE without even a warning. GTRE failed (Its hard to see how they couldn't, given their level). But should all the blame go to GTRE?? I hardly think so.
GTRE, again, takes the blame because it is the entity whose name suggests that this is where Gas Turbine Research in India is supposed to take place.
If we found out a month before the Chandrayaan mission that there is actually no Launch Vehicle, that actually the PSLV and GSLV are sounding rockets with Isp of 180 seconds, then who would get the blame? ISRO or some obscure outfit? So here GTRE is most definitely the entity to ask, "why were people left with the impression that the Kaveri engine is a viable modern option for the LCA when you guys are barely at 1971 in capabilities?"
Read the claims on the Kaveri from GTRE: Its supposed to have supercruise, flat-rated thrust, first engine to be designed for the diverse, harsh Indian Conditions, and well-suited for Hot Humid Climate of India, yada yada... when the reality is the "specs" were for a leaky turbojet of overall pressure ratio 21 and turbine inlet temperature of 1400+ C.
If GTRE were having trouble beating their heads against a target of 2000 C and a pressure ratio of 30 and bypass of 1, I would, as I have in the past, gone out on a limb to sing their praises for bravely going where no one has dared to go. Real-world maintenance issues of Indian Conditions, yes, sand ingestion issues, yes... High Density Altitude, yes... FOD robustness, yes...
But I find that they are not failing against anything of the sort. They are failing at a 1971 levelof ambition. It is time that people know that there is no serious leadership in jet engine techology, and it is time the protective covers were removed.
At least, GTRE needs to be pitted against a competing design bureau, if they don't want to do leading edge research, and just want to run glorified versions of undergraduate-level cycle analysis and stage analysis and call themselves an "RE". The Soviets, for all their Central Planning and abhorrence of capitalist greed, regularly pitted Mikoyan-Gurevich against Sukhoi and Tupolev and even Yakovlev(?) to ensure that there was enough "fire in the belly" to keep technology moving. For engines they seem to have had at least two (Tumansky and whoever builds the current ones?)
The Amir Khan keeps GE and P&W clawing at each other, and Williams, Garrett and others clawing around the small-engine world, to drive innovation - and allow Rolls Royce to have design bureaus right inside AmirKhana to keep these guys on their toes. In Oirope, its the same - enough cutthroat competition to drive innovation.
In India, GTRE has ruled the roost since the 1960s, and now whines that this is the FIRST engine that they are testing... and its a 1970 engine. Helloooo? Am I being unfair here?
As I stated, the problem is that GTRE was used to doing nothing. They did this extremely well from the 1960s when they failed to deliver anything useful on the HF-24 or Gnat, to the 1970s when they did (what DID they do in the 1970s? They had an Advanced Axial Compressor Engine mockup sitting in a dimly lit passage inside a glass cage, like the python cage at the Zoo in Malloostan. So it was very richly deserved that in the 1980s someone woke them up and asked them to come up with an engine design to justify their existence.
In 1986, the F100 type engines were out, and the glossy PR sheets gave just enough info that a 1-D cycle analysis and 2D stage analysis could be used to guess the temperature and most efficiencies.
NO WAY would anyone have specified anything so low for an engine to be started then. Nor would anyone at the ai ai teas done it - they were using the same textbooks in India then as in Amirkhana. So what was GTRE's justification for selling such an engine design as the one to power the LCA even if the LCA came out in 1994?
The only possible one is that they were sure the LCA would NEVER come out.
OK, so the LCA got delayed. Where was the scramble to come up with the Upgraded Kaveri engine, with more respectable specs? Why is it suddenly possible to quote this for 2 year project completion today, when the IAFfinally said
? The answer is very simple: someone seems to have sat down with Hill and Peterson, Chapter 13 and spent the 2 hours that they should have spent in 1976.
And I hardly think one can be fair without the full facts, such as knowing what DMRL is doing, or even what it is. Otherwise, it is just a lot of hot air.
This is the standard alibi - that we on the outside 'don't know the realities, the full facts', about "GTRE's real constraints" etc. etc. They get away with this because no journalist has asked the right questions, and GTRE is only too ready and willing to pose as The National Experts on Gas Turbine Propulsion in India when it comes to acting expert - until someone calls the bluff and asks about RESULTS. Then it is everyone else's fault.
OK, fair is fair: Do GTRE people have any clue at all what people on the outside have to do to keep themselves fed in a competitive world? Where are those GTRE peer-reviewed research publications showing their "R"? Where are their innovations? Patents? Top Secret Projects that are now flying? What comes across is
"This is our FIRST ENGINE! Please don't criticize us! It's all Someone Else's Fault because we have never done any work, so it can't be OUR work that's failing!"
They should keep their Director from opening his mouth and
, for starters.
Let us forget the actual blame for Kaveri.... start discussing the route forward. That is a more profitable line of enquiry.
Sorry, but failure to expose the reasons why India is in this state today, with solid technical facts, will guarantee that there is no profit in the "route forward" except for those who want to continue the idyllic bliss of GTRE's standard mode of existence all these years.
Last I checked, the Indian lady who went off with a PhD over a decade ago, was on a team running tests on a new engine for one of the 2 Amirkhanic companies, at some remote place on the Texas or Arizona / Mexico border where the temperature is above 120F. She told me that's because the explosions won't be in the newspapers. Wonder why GTRE's experts can't also be in Rajasthan in June and Cherrapunji in December, testing engines under those un-equalled Harsh Indian Conditions which require the T-i-T to be less than 1500 C to keep it from overheating
.
