Just received this press-release from DRDO: Gas Turbine Research Establishment, Bangalore of DRDO had been indigenously developing Kaveri engine for propelling the Indian Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas). As a spin off during development, a marine version has been evolved to develop shaft power for propelling Indian Naval ships.
Using the core of the Kaveri engine, the scientists of GTRE have added Low Pressure Compressor & Turbine as a gas generator and designed a Free Power Turbine to generate shaft Power for the maritime application. The Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine (KMGT) as it has been named has been transported to Naval Dock Yard, Vishakapatnam and installed on to the Marine Gas Turbine test bed which is an Indian Navy Facility capable of testing the Gas Turbines upto 25 MW of shaft power through a reduction gearbox and a water brake dynamometer.
The involvement of Indian Navy in the development of the engine including their participation during testing has given a tremendous push to the success achieved so far. During the recent visit of the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh to Naval Dock Yard, Vishakapatnam, Shri T. Mohana Rao, Director, GTRE has demonstrated the engine to the VVIP along with the Senior Naval Officers. The engine has been further tested to its potential of 12 MW at ISA SL 35°C condition which is the requirement of Indian Navy for propelling the SNF (Rajput) class of ships. This peak power was demonstrated to various dignitaries including the Scientific Advisor to Raksha Mantri Shri M. Natarajan, Vice Admiral B.S.Randhawa, Dr D Banerjee, CC (R&D) and others.
India will become self-reliant in this critical technology of gas turbines for ship propulsion with the support of the Indian Navy as a very active and participating user throughout the development. This will put India in the elite club of marine gas turbine designers amongst USA, Russia, UK and Ukraine.
That is great news. At least the project will be half successful with the marine version.
Shiv this is good news , atleast kaveri is alive in one form.
I was under the impression that Kaveri-Marine was rated for 19 MW at ISA SL , at least that was the original design goal.
Do they have any plans to replace the Kaveri marine on future naval ships like P-17 , IAC ? they all are being powered by GE LM2500,
All you do is keep posting these press releases on your blog and keep feeling happy…as you’ve become the spokesperson of DPR…thats your true vocation
why do you have to spin the news? give it your own twist? The news says KMGT is a spin off, where does it say that it is a dud for LCA? Infact it goes to show that effort for kaveri engine has started to come to fruition and giving products like these. It starts showing an attitude to show one own interpretation of news. Please report news or your own commentary or report on it, dont twist news.
this is nice news to hear, but i hope they keep the momentum up and get it in production A.S.A.P. because we know the DRDO style. At the initial stages, they talk big and towards the dateline (in fact, way after the dateline) they keep mum or come up with lame excuses and blame everybody, usually the end user. (i’m not saying the end user, i.e. armed forces are perfect, but it takes 2 hands to clap. so far, both haven’t been). However I’m quite optimistic on the Indian Navy.
rgds
COME ON MAN!! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!! MODERATION IN UR BLOG?? WHEN DID IT START!! I LEAST EXPECTED THIS FROM YOU!!
TRUST ME, THIS IS GONNA BE MY LAST POST (AND MY LAST EXCESS TO THIS BLOG) IF THIS MATTER ISN’T EXPLAINED. IT UTTERLY STINKS THAT IN THE LARGEST DEMOCRACY, YOU WANNA CENSOR (BY EDITING OR DISPOSING) PEOPLE’S COMMENTS!!!
SHIV.. POST THIS COMMENT AND THERE’LL BE MANY SUPPORTING ME. YOU’RE THE MODERATOR
Agreed with last anon. But we have no other way but to be positive about things. This is our first step and there are no previous checkpoint to compare ourselved with.
To the previous anon, news can never be just facts. What we indians call cross border terrorism, is called freedom struggle in Kashmir and Pakistan. The personal twist and logic is what makes facts interesting/acceptable.
The Indian Navy seems to be the only section of the Armed Forces giving a damn about seeing at least some indigenous projects through – and reaping the rewards for such foresight. Bravo.
shiv – if you plan on writing an opinion piece, kindly mark it as such. you have no right to twist the words of a press release and call the kaveri a dud.
anon @ 7:00 – please post an article where the DRDO refused to co-operate with the requirements of the army or the air force. in fact, all that DRDO does is work on GSQRs with shifting goal posts. plus there are a myriad projects where the so-called planning by the armed forces was done in the early 1980s but funding from the government wasn’t even released till 2000! so kindly stfu about “drdo style”. not that the idiotic journos like aroor or rat pandit help the matter; they seem to poison the public opinion with their biased, unresearched, factless writing
Gentlemen, Get used to it. The Kaveri is a dud, any which way you look at it.
The KMGT has a very very long ways to go before it actually gets on a ship.
No Navy is going to put into production a ship with a prototype GT.
The GE CF6-6 aircraft engine had many years and many hundreds of thousand,if not millions of hours of reliable performance before its marine avtar the LM 2500 was born.
GTRE seems anxious to produce results to justify its hitherto barren but expensive existence.
A KGMT powered railway locomotive may be next!
I agree with Anon above.
Shiv is a dud.
[email protected]: u work with DRDO?
NOW THAT’S BETTER. NO MODERATION, FREEDOM OF SPEECH. SHIV, IF THINGS GET TOO BAD, JUST REMOVE THOSE COMMENTS. I MEAN I HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT ‘TOO BAD’ MEANS.
want to know the exact technical details of what has happenned to Kaveri engine
read on
If you do visit the DRDO website you find the products page then find Kaveri engine then read on
you will see mentioned that Kaveri is a flat bed engine (It also mentioned (boistingly) that they have successfully demonstrated the flat bedding technology in test beds in bangalore ),
Lets explain what Flat bedding is
when an airplane rises in the atmosphere the air flow & ambiant atmospheric pressure go through a significant change in an around the airplane, & also it has a telling on the airflow into the engine & the exhaust.
Now with such atmospheric variations happenning the thrust of the engined also changes.
Hence somebody saw the reasoning that the thrust must be constant throught out, so whenever there is a variance in the atmosperic factors the engine should compensate it by increasing or decreasing the RPM.
This increasing or decreasing of RPM is called Flat bedding i.e keeping the thrust flat through out.
Now to my best knowledge & extensive reasearch i have not been able to find another Jet engine in the world that does that(there are some terboprop engines though)
By a little research & use of emagination from the reader
will be able to deduce from the above how must stress flat bedding will have on the compressor blades of the engine.
most of the Low bi-pass engines(fighter airplane engines) in the world are variable thrust engines.
Ok now with flat bedding in mind the whole Kaveri engine was designed.
NOW THE FLAT BEDDING IDEA HAS FLOPPED.THE COMPRESSER BLADES ARE NOT ABLE TO TAKE THE STRESS & THE ENGINE IS THROWING UP BLADES.
thats why the high altitude test in russia failed.
DRDO is afraid to admit it . It tries to use a unproven tecnology(theory).which it (on its own, & must have also convinced the ministry & the User i.e the air force about it )says has tested & found successful in a test bed in bangalore
&
designed a whole engine on it.
how did i know about it,
Facts
(1)use of flat bed technology in jet engine ,Especially what it seeks to do
(2)Knowledge about the ambiant atmospheric pressures & flows
(3)A little piece of info that the engine is throwing up blades from a semingly reliable public source.
(4)failure of high altitude test
the reader also think about it & draw its own conclusions.
However i have a small suggession to make , insted of redesigning the whole thing, this (what i am about to say) may be tried MIGHT HELP.
If the defence minister claims 93% thrust has been achived . then what I am about to say has a fair chace of working
There is a lot of publically available information on Toroidal aerospike rocket motor design. The information must be investigated upon for the design of the kaveri engine
The information might be significantly helpful, to deal with variation in fluctuation of ambient atmospheric pressure & its effect on the internal components of the engine
insted of forcing the engine to vary its RPM to deal with the changes in atmospheric forces let a static nozzel deal do the job.
@Above gyaani person. The term is ‘flat rating’ and not flat bedding. Flat rating doesn’t mean that at higher altitudes you are operating the engine above its operating limits and hence damaging it. It simply means you have a higher thrust engine but you specify a lower thrust rating to compensate for the thrust drop in hot and high operations. For example if Tejas needs a 20K pounds thrust engine then you design it to produce 22K to compensate thrust at high altitudes. Moreover it’s not a new concept and almost most modern engines encorporate this. Kaveri throwing it’s blade is old news and this issue has been fixed long back.
Cheers…..