It was in that event where Tarmac's Ananth sir had the chat with drdo chief posted recently. There is a small video
kaveri as a design was damn ambitious,
only 6 compressor stages when most country had either 9 (RD-33) and 7 GE -404,
no engine of kaveri size has 6 compressor stages.
so achieving thrust with low compression ratio is pretty hard.
but our manufacturing failed us not having forging press and iso thermal press.
not using blisk led to heavier engine and low compression ratio.
kaveri in blisk and solve lot of problems.
The initial design choices and inability to iterate quickly due to a lack of testing infrastructure caused us to fail.
If they can't invest money for testing infrastructure, then there is no question of investing in forging presses.
We were poor country then. Poor country's can't master such complex technology. Even China successfully made their WS engines after they reached $5 trillion GDP. Their attempt at a jet engine (WS6) when they were poor failed.
The problem is giving up too early. They should have course-corrected.
China invested in significant testing infra in 2000s. Il-76 based FTB appeared in early 2010s.
I just hope this time MoD listen to DRDO/GTRE wrt to 110kn engine and sanction money for testing & component manufacturing infrastructure as GTRE is demanding instead of saying "We have Partners for that."
It is not impossible, by improving the aerodynamics of the compressor blades and using techniques such as blisk and bling you can achieve it
we have to consider as allround effort go, defence research establishments were/are incredibly conservative , work in a close circle, will not let capable pvt co take part in their programs, only nominated co where they got in ie got someone retired in high post pulling strings and on top the huge corruption involved from select lobby within.
They did what Govt sort of wanted ie reach close enough so the Govt side can work out a deal with foreign partner at a reasonable price with hopefully local mfg. Effort gone in for the strategic systems and in this, huge difference intention wise can be noted . Reason is Govt wanted one thing done in house, while working out a deal for the other. Not pinning blame on anything, but this would be the line of practical thinking on the Govt side mind due to local industry capability. The huge effort needed for the whole ecosystem of a jet engine & associated items for smooth running, if Govt wanted that to be done by traditional closed circuit psu defence MIC like HAL BEL etc, other than license mfg from Rus there was no chance of that to happen. It is beyond the capacity, capability and will of the indigenous defence biz ecosystem. So they took the easy and practical route.
GTRE is readying the engine test cell for qualifying the KDE to prove its airworthiness, to be carried out on the FADEC engine mounted electrical harnesses.
Twin engine 130 kn test facility at Karnataka near Bangalore.
The test facilities are in house designed and developed. That also takes time. All the wind tunnels installed in DRDL, CAS BM site etc are thoroughly in house designed developed then full facility built as per it. Same goes for the Navy too, usually consultants are hired for various work but the final facility is put together by the respective labs. There are groups dedicated for such work & over 100 people work on this.
You mean there is something under work?
I haven't seen any initiative towards building compressor or HA test facilities.
No just mean that they may or may not yet have full technical details done for such a facility. Lets see, I also have not seen any such reference yet and likely the nature of JV will reflect that ie OEM facilities will be used instead of such a facility built within the country.
No do not know.