Project BRF - India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

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Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga

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60 posts 1
BR Mainsite Crew
17 Jan 2014 21:47
Last edited by Rahul M on 11 Feb 2014 16:25, edited 3 times in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
17 Jan 2014 23:02
Kaveri is ab-initio afterburning turbofan development program of GTRE, intended to be the powerplant for the LCA.
As a follow-up to the August 1983 sanction of the development of a multi-role Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), the need
of an indigenous turbofan to power it was felt. The ASR for LCA specified broad (and sometimes subjective)
dimensional and performance requirements of its powerplant.
https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=6726
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The genesis of the Kaveri is quite aptly captured in the CAG: Report No. 16 of 2010 -11 (Air Force and Navy):
...
Accordingly, there was a corresponding demand for a suitable engine for powering the LCA.
, provided certain
concessions were granted in the Air Staff Requirements (ASR).
...
At this point of time, the Gas Turbine Research Laboratory was already working upon an aero-engine project, the
GTX 37 engine, since 1982. In August 1986, a feasibility study was carried out jointly by Aeronautical Development
Agency (ADA), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) for evaluating
the GTX-37 engine. The
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Based on the above proposal, Government

with the
probable date of completion (PDC) as December 1996, for the design and development of Kaveri engine.
The Kaveri Engine Project was sanctioned with the following basic objectives:
1) Designing and developing the GTX-35 engine to meet the specific needs of the LCA.
2)
3) The engine so developed was to establish its performance integrity in various categories of tests prescribed by
the aero-engine industry world over.
Reams and reams have been written on the current state Kaveri, and there's no point in trying to reproduce it in detail
- however the following conclusion by the same CAG report quoted above sums it up quite appropriately:
Despite almost two decades of development effort with an expenditure of Rs 1,892 crore, GTRE is yet to fully
develop an aeroengine which meets the specific needs of the LCA. The successful culmination of the project to
develop an aero-engine through indigenous efforts is now dependent upon a Joint Venture with a foreign vendor.
Last edited by maitya on 18 Jan 2014 21:36, edited 4 times in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
17 Jan 2014 23:14
Guys, I think we'll go nowhere if try to debate about Kaveri/Kabini as state-of-the-art or not, is it good or bad or is
built from scratch or not?
As in most things in life, all of these attributes are relative and is thus pointless to label them as absolute, and argue
based on it.
So, heres my take (in 3 parts) on how this ab initio military turbojet/fan Engine development programme should be
viewed/evaluated apologies, it became a bit too long-winded (I have broken it up into 3 parts, for page-navigation
ease).
Anyway here goes
Kaveri was technology-wise contemporary till late 90s - ok, maybe even early 2000s. Directionally Solidified Casted
blades, Flat rating concept, near to 1400deg C TeT, 21-22 OPR etc are all hall marks of late 1990s military engines
either being unveiled and in mass-use then.
So should we label it as contemporary engine, carte blanche - hell no!!
The thing that happened is, while we were busy
developing Kabini/Kaveri, the established engine developers were all into deep R&D and prototyping of the next gen
technologies, broadly in the following areas:
1) Turbine Blade material technology - TET increase is one of the most important factors impacting efficiency levels of
turbojet/turbofan. And herein the material and casting technology able to withstand additional 300deg C operating
env - SCBs partly answers that problem, but TBCs, introduction of higher temp oxidation resistance properties and
multi-flow air path within the blades are areas where huge progress was made.
2) Compressor Design - Some sort of a re-birth of this dormant R&D area happened in the 1990s, with surge in R&D
(back to basics phenomena?) in the 90s, resulting in huge (some say game-changer) advancement seen in 2000s.
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Compressor design gains (and to an equally important aspect of the developing an industrial manufacturing capability
to translate these design gains to actual manufactured products) direct have a bearing on Pressure Ratios, the other
most critical parameter in a turbojet/turbofan.
The advent of supersonic compressor blade speed (1.6M - while Kaveri is stuck at transonic level of 1.2M etc), multicircular blade design (kaveri, I think, is at best double-circular arc design), low-aspect ratio blade design and more
importantly, the advances required in manufacturing engineering technology R&D (and subsequent manufacturing
engineering capability) to be able to translate these designs into a high-strength and relatively high-temp compressor
blades and disks, ensured that achievement of 2000s contemporary PR levels of 28-30.
So yes, the technology levels that we see in Kaveri/Kabini are what were already available in the military engines on
1980s and 1990s - i.e. these were in R&D and developed in 1970s and 1980s. We started the R&D and development in
1990s and two decades later (slightly more than what has been achieved by the western engine design houses in 196070s, maybe) we have close to a working engine.
But the engines available today (F414, for example) have already incorporated the technologies that were developed
in 1990s and 2000s.
One pertinent question that comes up though (partially bought out by Pentaih-ji)?
All of the above reasoning is fine and maybe even acceptable - but couldn't we have shortened these 2 decades plus
development and engineering period and somehow play catch-up.
The problem that I see in the previous set of posts is trying to argue that without any experience on turbojet and
turbofan engine design capability, this is impossible to have been achieved. Well, experience is a huge factor but not
the only factor one of the major reasons for where we are today, IMVHO and daresay, are the design choices (both
core engine design and material/manufacturing choices and design) being made back in 1980s.
But to understand this aspect we need to go back a bit and examine the history of Kaveri engine design/development.
BR Mainsite Crew
17 Jan 2014 23:28
Well first-of-all, its erroneous to assume Kaveri (or GTX-35 VS) is the absolute first turbojet/turbofan
to be designed/developed from the ground up (from scratch) by GTRE its not. In fact Kaveri is not at all a from the
scratch development in the first place it more of an upgrade.
Its predecessors were GTX-37 U (turbojet) -> GTX-37 UB (its turbofan version) -> GTX-35 (enhanced turbojet based
on 37U tech). And Kaveri (or GTX-35 VS) is more of an upgrade of GTX-35 (same core etc.). The following schematic
depicts the Kaveri lineage:
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Note:
But all of these, still doesnt make the above lack-of-experience argument completely void as none of these
predecessors actually flew and are more of a laboratory products (or tech demos).
Back in 1983, right after the LCA project was sanctioned, a concurrent engine evaluation study was conducted by
GTRE - in 2 years time, in 1985, this was completed and the summary finding was "No contemporary engine is
available world-wide that meets the LCA engine specifications".
F-404 etc were after-thought and more importantly, risk mitigating steps, which due to non-delivery of the actual
engine, has now become the default engine.
of GTRE in 1989, after a comprehensive study of various materials of
Anyway, similarly a
contemporary turbo-jet/fan engines, and also after taking into account the infrastructure facilities available within
the country in general and production capability of MIDHANI and DMRL, recommended the development of material,
batch production and type certification process etc.
The Kaveri development programme was then launched in 1989.
The Kaveri itself (actually only the core, kabini) first ran in Mar 1995 and 2 Kabini prototypes (C1 and C2) and 3 full
engine prototypes (K1, K2 K3) ran between 1995 and 1998.
BR Mainsite Crew
17 Jan 2014 23:31
With this historical background in place, IMVHO, Id speculate that what really
happened in 1990 or thereabouts, while the performance and (also materials roadmap) design for Kaveri were being
finalized , is the designers and technologists of the GTRE were faced with a major dilemma:
1) On the design front,
a. is it sensible to aim for the various core design parameters (e.g. OPR, TET, BPR, Combustor
efficiency, supersonic compressor regimes, ultra-low aspect ratio blades, blisk manufacturing etc) of the
various modern engine development programs in R&D
OR
b. to stick to the basic already understood basic design layouts of the GTX-37U and 37UBs and try and
introduce medium-level of improvements on these design parameters and still meet the Kaveri specs.
2) Similarly, on the materials front,

a. Aim of the materials technology being worked on at various material design houses (e.g 2nd and 3rd
Gen SCBs, DS based later-stage compressor blades, 1st gen SCB based , Ceramic and Polymer Matrix based
combustors and static-engine parts etc etc) and provide a quantum jump in performance parameters that
was being asked from Kaveri specs
OR
b. Provide a more conservative incremental advancement in material tech (e.g. introduce Dir Solidified
blades for HPT, Ti and Ni based-equiaxed-casted Compressor blades, contemporary bolted disk and
blade interfaces, annular combustor etc) and still achieve the Kaveri specs
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It may be fashionable to attribute the GTRE folks as failures/worthless/losers etc , but the fact they had a fair idea
about the contemporary advancements being carried out world-wide, to have made the design-choices that were
made, then.
So the decision matrix then may have looked like:
1(a)2(b) ---|--- 1(a)2(a)
---------- Risk ------------>
1(b)2(a) ---|--- 1(b)2(b)
The GTRE technologists and designers chose 4th quadrant i.e. 1(b)2(b) of course, with a hidden/inner ambition of
getting to the 1st quadrant stuff concurrently and as the general technological level of the country advances in next 2
decades.
Pls, one word of caution towards over-emphasizing the success of dry-thrust, 90%
wet thrust achievement (SFC, well, not sure) etc yes those values are achieved, but at what weight (and maybe SFC
also) penalty?
If you look at the chart above, a prev gen GTX-37UB also would have met these figures, isnt it (with even more
weight and SFC penalty).
So IMO right way of labeling Kaveri is to call it as qualified-success. As it, for the first time, if pursued with no let-up
thru the flight-test-programme, will validate a flying turbofan engine in technological terms it would
1) validate (and provide invaluable empirical data) the CFD and basic mechanical design of a twin-spool 80KN turbofan
(90s level)
2) given enough design and manufacturing technological confidence of 80s level of material tech
Without these theres no hope of leapfrogging technological gens etc (refer to epilogue section for a glimpse of that),
and we're doomed to play catch-up forever.
But there-in lies the problem,

i.e. first, recall the findings of Engine evaluation study of 1985 which basically stated LCA engine specs are set highenough to be met by a contemporary engine then. Now contrast that with the constraining technological choices (aka
Conservative-Conservative) being made for Kaveri to achieve those.
This essentially means, theres wafer-thin margin of error towards meeting both the core engine-design parameters
and the enabling material/manufacturing design/technology. Even shortfall of one parameter may spell doom and
thats precisely happened with Kaveri albeit shortfall in meeting almost all design parameters (admittedly, by small
enough margin but big enough to all contribute to a compounding effect of the shortfall we see today).
But wait, before we start dishing out our advises, from our hindsight-is-20/20 vantage point, lets try and think thru
why would the GTRE folks not consider high-high risk of 1(a)2(a) approach.
Well, if you look at our national psyche of extremely naval-gazing, if-its-made-in-India-must-be-useless, pricing-oftech-dev-in-terms-of-social-upliftment-missed-cost, 3-legged-cheetah-labelling-user-attitude etc. (Shivji will have a
longer list), GTRE folks would be mortally scared of failures arising from such a high-risk endeavour.
Frankly, Im not very sure if it mattered to the GTRE folks, if LCA flew or not, as long as they have met the Kaveri
design parameters. So when the larger program, due to scope creep, necessitated a requirement growth of a next-gen
powerplant, Kaveri in its present technological form is not even close to it.
Plus all this talk of new imported core etc means exactly that a fully imported engine in terms of jet-engine tech,
nothing more nothing else.
Thats the price to be paid for a pessimistic/stifling national outlook towards technological advancement with zerotolerance towards failures and import at all cost attitude.
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While we constantly continue to berate the GTRE folks for technological failure etc, a small bit of snippet
needs understanding.
In mid-2000s, desperate to trying to reduce the overweight Kaveri (its still overweight by 150Kg or there-abouts),
GTRE folks went ahead experimenting with the absolute cutting edge of material tech i.e. Ceramic Matrix Composites
(CMC) and Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC) on some of the non-rotating-non-critical components. CMC was targeted
towards a few hot-components like Nozzle divergent petals, exhaust cone etc while PMC (high temp PMR-15 class)
towards bypass duct, CD Nozzle cowls at the back etc.
The aim was to reduce weight by 30Kgs (i.e. approx. 20-25%).
In contrast, pls google around for CMC and PMC related R&D and, more importantly, its usage on various aero-engine
).
by established western players (
This confidence and attitude are the true by-products of the Kaveri engine development program.
Last edited by maitya on 17 Jan 2014 23:42, edited 1 time in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 00:09
So where exactly are we wrt Kaveri ... the following info can be a dated (from 2009), but still acurately reflects the
overall state of what has been achieved in the program so far, and more importantly, what are the various shortfalls,
requiring more work and handholding.
Posting in full, k prasad's entire post (pure gold, must say) from
...
Ok.... this is the GTRE story - (someone come up with sad music plz).... from the Aeroseminar.
An overview of the Kaveri situation was provided by the GTRE director, T. Mohan Rao, who was accompanied by his
senior scientists. The hall was packed, and the language and tone of his speech was sadly self-depracating and
pleading. Almost as if DRDO has also started losing faith - he had to explain whats going on and why its happening.
Sad to see, but there are clear silver linings in the story.
1. He pointed out that the change in IAF requirements and the increase in all up wt by 2 tons killed the Kaveri as
they knew it, simply because it could not in any way be able to achieve the new requirements... he was quite
angry that they had been blamed for what was obviously not their fault, ie, a low-performing Kaveri for the
updated reqs. Bypass Ratio is 0.16 to 0.18... he pointed out that if it had to meet the new stds, the bypass would
have to be at least 0.35 to 0.45.
2. 4 Cores and 8 Kaveris built, 1800 hrs testing done.
3. Pressure ratio - 21.5 overall.

Fan - 3 stage, 3.4 pressure ratio, Surge margin>20.
Compressor 6.4 pressure,Surge>23.
Combustor - efficiency >99%, high intensity annular combustor. Pattern factor of 0.35 and 0.14
Note: These are ACHIEVED values.
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4. The present Kaveri will not power combat LCAs, although it will be fitted to an LCA within 9 months. The new
program, which is the Kaveri with Snecma Eco core of 90kN will be used. The preslim design studies and
configuration have beeen completed.
5.Birdhit requirements of 85% thrust after hit at 0.4-0.5 Mach have been shown and achieved.
6. He pointed out the major factor in delays being them not being given enough infrastructure and testing
facilities - Govt has not given funds, babus have sat on them. Instead, they have had to go to CIAM in Russia and
Anecom in Germany for tests.
He mentioned that this was the biggest problem - one of the issues they have was in engine strain and the blade
throws - they tried to isolate all the causes for 3 yrs, but only when they took it to CIAM for the Non Intrusive
Strain Measurement (NSMS) tests did they realize that there were excess vibrations of the 3rd order of engine
frequency being developed.... imagine if the facility was there in india.
Then, the compressor tests also, it was only at the Anecom that they could see that the 1st 2 stages were surged by
20%, while the rest were "as dead as government servants" (his quote - shows how low on confidence they are i
guess). He pointed out that that would have saved a lot of time and money if that facility was in india. They have
since fixed the issue.
Then, the afterburner tests, (the much highlighted high altitude failure) at CIAM . The K5 prototype failed in 2003, after working perfectly in the GTRE. They
realized that they could not achieve lightup at high altitudes (Dry thrust worked ok).
They took anothe new engine block and the afterburner worked perfectly and has been certified to 15 km.
7. The good news..... they will conduct complete engine trials in CIAM in March. If these trials are successful (and
they are highly confident), the Kaveri will be integrated on the LCA within 9 months.
The KADECU FADEC system with manual backup has also been fully certified.
8. The bad news again - The present requirements would need the core to pump out 15-20% more power, which is
impossible... hence the eco. Not that there is anything wrong with the core.
He mentioned that otherwise, the Kaveri has met the original requirements, or will meet within the next month,
and is good for all other uses except a "combat LCA" - ie, CAT, LIFT, LCA Trainer, etc.
9. When asked where we lack, he mentioned 4 key areas
a. BLISK - integrated single Blade and Disk
b. Single Crystal blades - he categorically said - We do not have that tech at all.
c. Thermal Barrier Coatings - TBC - very critical for high temp engine operation. A talk on this by an American
Indian prof attracted a house full audience. He mentioned that this is highly critical and export controlled, so they
dont have it.
The last two points were mentioned by Dir, DMRL as one of their areas of research, but I was not able to quiz him
on it. PLEASE QUIZ ANY DMRL GUYS U MEET ON THIS.
Mohan Rao appealed that people should realize that this tech takes time, and money, and more importantly,
willpower and support.... its not being given by foriegn nations, so if we have to develop, it needs support. This
stance found strong support from Saraswat, Sundaram and Selvamurthy in the closing ceremony.
They are not looking at TVC just yet, and it is in the hands of other labs at the moment.
However, the ADE presentation on UCAVs showed a future Indian UCAV (2015) with no tail (MCA design), a nonconventional wingform, and a 3 axis TVC.
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10. OK, some nos....

Fan - Successful tests at CIAM
Compressor: (nos in brackets are design values)
6 stage axial flow, 3 stage variable vanes with IGVs.
Corr. tip speed ~370 m/s
Inlet diam: 590 mm
Mass flow: 24.13 kg/s (24.3)
Pressure: 6.42 (6.38)
Efficiency: 85.4% (85%)
Surge %: 21.6 (20% designed)
Combustor:
Has undergone aero testing at CIAM
K8 V4 combustor is close to design.
Turbine:
Pressure = 3.6
Mass flow function= 1.1
Isentropic eff = 85%
Max. TET = 1700K
Is a success, has met design.
11. Future uses:
Navy - KMGT - 1 MW for small ships being developed, 5-6 MW KMGT is a sucess and runs on Diesel, instead of the
usual kerosene aviation fuel.
The railways also wants a 7-8MW CNG run engine, which will be a challenge in terms of fuel supply, rather than teh
combustion itself, which shouldn't be a problem.
Any qns???
Pls note the the thrust reported in 2009 in the above post by GTRE director, T. Mohan Rao viz. Dry: 4774kgf 46.82KN and Wet: 7000kgf - 68.65KN.
Now fast-forward to 2010-2011, and we have this:
From the hindu

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/techno ... 127075.ece
In recent times, the engine has been able to produce thrust of
other stake-holders desire is power between 9095 KN.
but what the IAF and
I think with the JV with Snecma in place now, we would be able to achieve these parameters in near future,
they said.
So already around 8% growth in wet thrust achieved (alongwith around 10% growth in dry thrust) - these can't be
achieved without improvement in the compressor or turbine or both efficiency.
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So justifiably a very good effort and something that GTRE needs to pride itself with.
But to go to 81KN stage will require anothe 7% growth in thrust which will have to involve further tweaking the
compressor stages.
IMO the mass flow rate *may* continue to be the issue (no published figure so far - the above indicates the
compressor mass flow) which can be resolved by increasing the compressort stage pressure ratios - i.e
1) either by making the compressor lighter (improved materials etc., so it rotates faster from the same power from
turbine)
2) or by enhancing the aerodynamic efficiency of the compressor (which anyway was a compromised one, as
nobody wanted to manufacture the originally designed fan-blades due to increased manufacturing complexity given
the low volumes involved)
3) or by increasing the turbine efficiency (so going for higher TET but DS blades wouldn't work and will require SCB
tech or by improving the blade-cooling tech)
None of the above are very easy paths to pursue and is actually the technology gen for the contemporary engines.
Talking about 90-95KN etc (interestingly, no mention of the dry thrust) is futile without goig thru the abovementioned hoofs and, nobody would like to part with their knowhow before they themselves have moved onto the
next generation technology itself.
^^^ It was a known fact from 2008.

http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/1923534 ... pment.html
: We have a functional engine, but there is a slight shortfall in performance.
Also, we still have to perform long- endurance tests of the engine to

run for many hours.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 00:52
One important aspect that is almost always overlooked (being less glamorous) are the dimensional specifications of
Kaveri.
All performance parameters are required to be achieved within the prescribed dimensional parameters - there's no
point in trying to create an engine which meets the performance parameters but exceeds the dimensional parameters
like Weight, Dia, Length etc. As breaching them can make them impossible to fit in the airframe (or may require
change, which normally sets back the actual program by decades) making them unusable. So what are the dimensional
parameters of Kaveri?
Length: 137.4 in (3490 mm)

Diameter: 35.8 in (910 mm)
Dry weight: 2,724 lb (1,235 kg) [Goal: 2,100-2450 lb (950-1100 kg)]
Compressor: two-spool, with low-pressure (LP) and high-pressure (HP) axial compressors:
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- LP compressor with 3 fan stages and transonic blading

- HP compressor with 6 stages, including variable inlet guide vanes and first two stators
Combustors: annular, with dump diffuser and air-blast fuel atomisers
Turbine: 1 LP stage and 1 HP stage
So for Kaveri how are these dimensional parameters impacting/constraining the performance shortfall of Kaveri?
... not exactly sure what you are trying to say.
Nowhere in the world billions of $s are spent in developing a science project, as you are alluding to, without clear-cut
and exact specifications in place. And, for a turbojet/turbofan development programs, the dimensional and the
performance parameters are absolutely vital on deciding which way program would go.
So just like any other turbojet/turbofan program, Kaveri also had it's performance (Th - 52/80KN, SFC - 80/207
kg/kN.h, TWR - 76N/Kg) parameters define to be achieved within the specified dimensional constraints (of L - 3.5m,
D - 0.9m and Wt - 950Kg). Those performance and dimensional parameters are around which the LCA airframe
dimension, strength and overall design (e.g. air-intake design) itself were specified.
So anyway, if Kaveri would have met these specified parameters it would have been good enough for the LCA.
And which it almost did - except for the weight and wet thrust part, where it fell short by 10-15% - for which it can be
labeled as failure etc, and GTRE folks needs to re-double their effort to regain back those shortfalls.
As after all, theoretically (for the sake of argument) if it were to be argued that Thrust is the be-all and end-all and
dimensional constraints are not important, then Kaveri program itself hardly required - those thrust ratios were
achieved almost a decade back by it's predecessors (GTX-37 UB tec.)
On the contrary, dimensional parameters are extremely important as it would limit the mass-flow rate, number of
compressor (and even turbine) stages that can be squeezed-in, the BPR itself etc - all having direct impact on the
performance parameters like Thrust, Weight, SFC etc
But that's hardly the point.

The point that I's trying to make above was - the design choices/technological roadmap chosen (due to a various of
factors discussed above) in developing Kaveri. That conservative approach meant, while the program (and these design
choices) were sufficient to meet Kaveri performance specs, it provided almost nil cushion against any performance
parameter scope-creep.
So when LCA got overweight by 1.2tons or so (it was originally envisaged to be a 5.5-ton class fighter), the Kaveri core
couldn't provide any easy scaling-up capability of the performance parameters required to address this scope-creep.
But, how can the GTRE folks be directly faulted for not able to address this scope-creep etc - they didn't have any
contribution towards LCAs weight-gain, after all.
Even then, mind-you theoretically, even-now if the mass-flow can be increased, this Kaveri core can have enhanced
Thrust rating as well - but all other performance parameters like SFC etc will suffer big time - due to a further
reduction in Thermal Efficiency (refer ot that excel, a couple of pages back). So, such kind of stunts are always
avoided.
So is there any +ves of this program - Yes, and actually there are too many to count - but all of these +ve can be very
easily bought to naught, if Kaveri program is abandoned at this and not taken to it's logical conclusion of completing a
comprehensive flight-test program.
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1/11/2016
With this program, we have for the first time understood and will continue to understand the FD, Mechanical design
and material/manufacturing technological/engineering aspects of 80KN class twin-spool turbofan engine (this is as
cutting edge as it ever gets), as the next stages of the program are undertaken - something that has taken more than
half-of-century by the industrialized world to master, and no nation will ever pass-on that knowledge, however
friendly they are to us.
For example (just to make a point), the SPR of a HPC stage can be dramatically improved by carefully "introducing
well-shaped" intra-stage shock waves (where is N^3, when you need him most).
And given the OPR achieved so far in Kaveri is about 21 or thereabouts (against a design goal of 27), this can be a very
tempting option. But who is going to tell us the blade strength, blade geometry, aspect ratio, solidity etc which helps
in initiating, sustaining and optimizing it. And even if they do, who is going to tell us the material composition and
physical characteristics of these HPC stage blades that will be required to achieve it - nobody, I repeat, absolutely
nobody. We will have to try, fail, try again, fail again, try again and learn it the hard way.
Theres absolutely no other way.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 01:19
The other important aspect is to ascertain how much of an impact the Kaveri R&D subprogram failures are having an
impact on the parent program - aka R&D, productionising and operationalizing of LCA.
Any failure or slippage of the vital program (as described as the "Achilles Heel", right at the inception) like that of
Kaveri can render the parent LCA programme so much delayed that it loses it relevance by the time it fructifies. So it's
worthwhile to understand the rough-timeline of the Kaveri development plan, it's touch-points with the LCA program
and any impact (if at all) on the parent program.
So the question arises, is it true that
Kaveri engine development is part of the overall LCA program - true - however it was well understood that this aspect
of the program would be singularly the riskiest one and is thus well mitigated for (hint: decision timeline for getting
GE F-404 and the fact that absolutely no redesign/analysis etc required for matching the F404 engine Fans with the
air-inlet design - it was as if the whole airframe was built around F404).
So whilst it is unfortunate that Kaveri program itself didn't deliver, the overall program itself (from a platformavailability to the end-user perspective) was not delayed because of this unavailability.
^^
Philip ji, first TD flew in 2001, PV in 2003, all with same engine 404. Also, for LPs (as per your link) it was decided
to have 404 in 2003. They also first flew on 2007. All indicating high compatibility with aircraft design.
I agree with Maitya's deduction that from the beginning LCA was designed around 404 not Kaveri. Until or unless
Kaveri is 404 clone and easily swappable.
Sidji thanks. Actually the TDs got rolled out with F404 much earlier than their 1st flights - details are in the following
brief timeline of this:
1. LCA was always intended to fly with F404-GE-F2J3 for the FSED-I phase i.e TD 1/2 + PV 1/2
No sane program management team would risk flying an unproven airframe with an unproven engine.
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The dimensional similarity between Kaveri and F404 (e.g Dia - F404 35in vs Kaveri 35.8in, Weight F404 1036Kg vs
Kaveri 950-1000Kg etc) are not mere happenstances. The "desired" requiremental dimensions of the LCA power-plant
were carefully chosen (in 1987-88 etc) after proper due-diligence of what would be realistically available in 1995-99
or thereabouts.
i.e. in lay-man terms, the dimensions of the intended LCA power-plant (Kaveri) were based on those of forecasted
contemporary turbofan engine (that would be available in late 90s) achieving similar Thrust, SFC and a host of other
parameters.
Of course, as it is customary in such ab intio development programs, to have the intrinsic design parameters like SFC,
OPR, TeT to be a notch above than those that would be available in the contemporary engines during it's
developmental phases - more in sync with teh forecasted parameters of engines what would be contemporary during
atleast the 1st half of the intended platform's ops life (of 2 decades +).
So not only does the rolled-out LCA TDs (TD1 in 1995 and TD-2 in 1998) had the F404-GE-F2J3 installed on them, but
also they were on both PV1 and PV2 in the early 2000s.
All as per planned.
2. Also, as per the original plan (of 1987-88), if Kaveri sub-program succeeded, it was to be fitted onto LCA for the
FSED-II phase (PV-3 as the production-prototype variant, PV-4 as the naval variant, and PV-5 as the trainer variant).
And of course, then roll-on to the LSPs and SPs as well.
3. So while 1st phase of flight testing of the FSED-I phase was on-going (it itself got delayed due to 1998-sanctions and
resultant delays in developing the FBW system), in parallel the Kaveri program was also progressing.
And the Kaveri program started off well actually - core (Kabini) first ran in 1995, full 1st prototype engine (Kaveri)
began testing in 1996 and by 1998, all five prototypes (K1-K5/K6) were in testing.
But, in 2003 itself, while LCA was merely into 2 yrs into FSED-I flight testing, the indigenous HPT DS-blades started
giving up. So, as a last ditch attempt, to keep the engine program on track, the DS blades were imported from Snecma
(this import bit is purely IIRC and I need to cross-check it again).
4. But in mid-2004, the Kaveri failed its high-altitude tests in Russia. So it was then decided, Kaveri will not be ready
for the FSED-II phases and GE was awarded a US$105 million contract (in 2004) for 17 F404-IN20 engines for LSPs and
NPs (and delivery of which began in 2006).
5. The IAF ASR change (justified, in my opinion) happened in 2004/05 - this led to further delays in re-configuring the
basic airframe (and thus further increased weight) to cater to it - so all FSED-II platforms were delayed towards
incorporating these changes.
6. PV-1/2/3 and LSP-1 (in 2007) all flew with 2J3 version and LSP-2 with IN20 (in 2008) - followed by other LSPs.
All as per their revised schedule, dictated singularly by the program flight testing schedule - plus the delays due to reconfiguring the platform due to ASR change (and of course the prototype building pace by HAL - aka "hand built"
platforms).
7. And also due to pt.5 above, the resultant weight increase also made Kaveri completely unsuitable for LCA Mk1. So,
in 2007, an additional 24 F404-IN20 afterburning engines were ordered to power the first operational squadron of
Tejas fighters and of course, Kaveri program itself was then officially delinked with the main LCA programme.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 01:23
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But the above still leaves out the confusion about sanctions etc and availability of GE F404 engines. Well, it so
happens, right after the LCA program was sanctioned (in 1983), the engine feasibility study (of 1986) and Kaveri
program sanction (of 1989), GTRE (actually HAL then) went ahead and bought the GE F404 engines required for the
FSED-I phases (and some more).
This is corroborated in this 1989 NY Times article (By SANJOY HAZARIKA, Special to the New York Times Published:
February 05, 1989) India Plans to Increase Arms Imports and Exports.
Excerpts
Officials also are discussing purchase of technology from France and the United States for components of a
futuristic light combat aircraft planned by 1996.
, opening the door to greater military cooperation more than 20 years
after Washington ended arms sales to India.
Plus 1998 sanctions didnt have much of an impact either, as these engines were already integrated into TD1 and TD2
plus the LCA internal design was a perfect match for the dimensions of F404 (refer to my previous post on
dimensional similarity aspect between Kaveri and F404), so future integrations were also not much of an issue.
BRF Oldie
18 Jan 2014 05:52
Theres absolutely no other way.
Quite true. So they need to either have a small team work very hard for 20 years, or have 30 teams work very hard for
2 years - sort of in Archimedes mode, as in, u don't deliver, ur head is delivered.
Given that this is so crucial, why is the Indian defense establishment unable to articulate the need for this sort of
effort? Or is the truth that you can't find 3 teams, let alone 30, that will actually do the work?
I have to say that in 30 years of trying, I have come to the conclusion that if there are really dedicated universitybased aerospace research teams in India, I have not found them. Seems like there are a few people in DRDO and ISRO
and BARC who care, but the rest seem to be just, well... I don't want to be insulting.
A couple of years ago, IISc was establishing a Pratt&Whitney Chair - did they find someone and is s(he) moving ahead
to solve the engine problems?
Last edited by Indranil on 18 Jan 2014 10:26, edited 2 times in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 13:25
So it's high-time we try and decode where exactly is Kaveri lacking wrt not only reaching it's Dry and Wet Thrust
(actually TWRs) levels but also why scaling up to GE F414 level thrusts is appearing to be such an insurmountable
challenge.
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But before doing that, it's required to understand the current layout of the Kaveri wrt tempurature and pressure distn.
Much water has flowed under the bridge and we are where we were when it all started?
Livefist ::
:: Kaveri's Compressor Blades + The Indian Single Crystal Effort
1) That presentation (to be clear, from : India's Defence Metallurgical Research Lab (DMRL) in Hyderabad) is from
2010 (there could be newer versions out there)
2) It does not claim that the Kaveri has SCB, it very well could have if that were a fact
3) It states, like a few posters here have, that India does have access to SC technology
...
...
But, here is an interesting diagram, we now have a basic idea of temp/pressure/alloys in a Kaveri (it may have
changed):
Another important aspect of discussing highly Technical aspects (like that of a Turbofan) from a lay-man point of view
is the inevitable "what-if-then ..." kind of scenarios that props up from time to time e.g. it's natural to have a thought
like ok, to increase the dry thrust by 10% how much mass-flow rate should be increased (all other performacne aspects
being equal".
These, though being strictly theoretical exercises, do increase the understanding of a lot of aspects of the programme
as a whole. The following is an humble attempt towards it:
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Thank you maitya saar. One more question ... ?
srin, on a slightly different but relevant note, pls appreciate that the problem of trying to analyze/explain turbojet
workings strictly from a lay-man pov, is this dependence on rudimentary mathematical aspects to explain away
complicated, multi-disciplinary high-funda stuff that includes exotic CeeFDee concepts like 3D NS, Boltzman
Equations, Supersonic Shock Propagation, Boundary Value conditions of flow etc etc.
But being a certified DOO, the method of overcoming it that appealed to me most, was to create a simple excel with
the basic gas turbine parameters deriving other dependent parameters, from the 1st principles and then use these
derivations and results for analysing/explaining generic gas-turbine queries/concepts/issues.
) and way-too generic (e.g. both compressor and turbine stages
Agreed its over-simplified (e.g. Wcmpr = Wtrbn
) to make some of the explaining even invalid, but still it helps in analyze/explaining.
are Isentropic
Plus of course, this allows people to play around with various permutation-combination of the 3 basic turbojet
parameters (viz. OPR, TET and Mass Flow) and start deriving and designing their own paper-turbojets.
So here goes:
PS: Some Pir-review will be extremely welcome.

Method Used to create this tool: The method Ive used is,
1. to first take only 3 input very basic variables (viz OPR, TeT and Mass Flow values)
2. plonk it along with other constants viz. Engine Entry Temp, Specific Heat Ratio (for a constant gas mass and
volume), Atm Pressure of the engine operating scenario, Velocity of Air Intake and Specific Heat Capacity.
3. Using these, derive other basic gas-turbine parameters (depicted as 1st Level, 2nd Level and 3rd Level derivations)
4. Use the calculation/derivation process to explain away, from lay-man pov, the interplay between various turbo-jet
concepts.
Note: Here-in Id like to also mention that the,

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1. Green column was more towards validating the concepts/formulas used here-in, by comparing against published
calc results for a certain set of the input variable values
2. Lighter blue column is to then use these baselined calcs (and assumptions) and play-around with the open-source
(read Wiki) Kaveri parameters
3. Darker Blue is to do the above (like the lighter blue column) but with the aspirational parameters of Kaveri and see
where these calcs go.
So with this tool in place, I can now attempt to analyse/explain some of the turbo-jet idiosyncrasies and hopefully
able to arrive at some conclusions - but that for some other day.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 13:26
Now first let's first look at the most difficult and strategic aspect of a turbofan - namely the Turbines (and more
precisely the HPT, to be followed by the LPT).
There are quite a few information thats getting scattered across various threads and needs consolidation in one place
in this thread (for archival and ready reference).
his invaluable uploads from AI13 on Kaveri by moving the infoboards and images.
First thing first, Shivji messed up
They need to be linked from here so here they are (credit and copyright completely goes to Shivji and Shivji alone).
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In a lay-man terms what does these images signify vis--vis GTREs Kaveri/Kabini development project. Well, from a
60K ft level, these images are the 1st proof of Single Crystal Blade manufacturing (or should I just leave it at
development only) in India.
But at a slightly lower level, we still need to understand, of course purely from a lay-mans pov, why is this SCB
dev/design capability so important for us (from any indigenous military jet engine dev capability pov) - and, more
importantly, where do we stand today (from open source info only) in achieving this capability.
So the remainder of this post is an attempt (must admit a bit audacious one) to detail this aspect from a purely layman pov.
So here goes:
A typical turbine blade (a HPT blade to be precise) in a turbo-fan would be rotating at a 10K rpm in a 1600deg C (say)
temperature operating environment which would mean the tip is moving at approx 1200kmph.
So for a blade of say 10cm long and a radius of 0.5m, would mean 160MPA of pressure on the blade.
The fan-blade material (in the HP and LP Turbines) would thus need to be able to handle that kind of physical stress
along with a 1600deg C thermal stress in order to extract work from the gas stream and convert into to mechanical
energy in the form of a rotating shaft to turn the upstream compressors and fans. Plus they need to also have adequate
oxidation resistance and hot corrosion resistance at those operating temperature.
A very tall order.
The blade metallurgy comes into picture there-in pls refer to the images posted by Shivji from AI13.
In the Equiaxed (aka traditional) blade, the grain boundaries are on both axis, longitudinal and transverse (aka both
length and across), so under thermal and mechanical stress, creep propagation can happen in any direction - but
mostly the failures happen radially, the traditional weak link in the microstructure.
With Directionally Solidified (DS) the transverse grain boundaries are removed and columnar microstructures are
formed -basically by carefully controlling the temperature gradient, a planar solidification front (across the crosssection of the foil) is first formed and then the whole blade is solidified by moving this planar front longitudinally
across the length.
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This results in multiple oriented grain structures running parallel to the major axis (aka parallel to the length of the
blade) with no transverse (aka cross) grain boundaries. But these long grain boundaries being weak, it requires
addition of Boron and Carbon (and hafnium and zirconium) impurities to be added to make them sufficiently strong
against creep propagation.
This alignment of grain boundaries longitudinally (length-wise) confers substantial increase in creep life. DS provides
as much as 10times more strain control or thermal fatigue compared to Equiaxed blades - plus the impact strength is
also more (approx 33%) compared to Equiaxed blades.
<<Insert Image from hdd>>
This schematic shows the DS and Single Crystalline (SC) casting process - In each case, molten super-alloy is poured
into a ceramic mold seated on a water cooled copper chill. And grains are nucleated on the chill surface and are
grown in a columnar manner parallel to the unidirectional temperature gradient this is achieved by slowly moving
the mold away from the furnace.
Pls notice that, SC blade creation process is almost identical to that of DS process but with one very important
difference - that of the presence of grain selector (that helical structure at the bottom, kind of a filter which allows
only 1 columnar microstructure to propagate longitudinally across the blade length).
As solidification proceeds, two to six grains enter the helix, (or grain selector) - some grains are physically blocked
from entering the helix and the one or few that survive, have their horizontal dendrites most favorably positioned to
enter the helix. After one or two turns of the helix only one crystal survives - this one grain emerges from the top of
the selector, and this grain fills the entire mold cavity.
The helix wire diameter typically varies from 0.3 to 0.5 cm (0.1 to 0.2 inch).The single crystal production process uses
the same vacuum furnaces as for columnar-grain castings (aka DS castings), but the temperature gradients in the
furnaces have been increased significantly from about 36 to 72 deg C/cm.
Just to underline the importance of various blade metallurgy technologies, a 25 deg C improvement in metal
temperature capability corresponds to a three-fold improvement in blade-life.
But, the SCB all by itself is not the be all for achieving high TeT in fact the 1st gen SCBs falls short of last-gen DS of
approx. 1450deg C TeT by about 100deg C.
In fact the initial SC work on SC version of the MAR-M200 was abandoned in mid-60s as it was found to provide no
additional benefit over DS version of it. Its only in the late 70s it caught on again when they could overshadow DS
blades by removing the artificially added grain-boundary strengthening elements. Also in fact the DS version of MARM200 provided very high levels of creep and thermal fatigue strength and the SC versions didnt really improve too
much on these two parameters (it did marginally though) what the SC version did was to improve on all four vital
parameters viz. oxidation resistance and hot-corrosion resistance in addition to creep and thermal fatigue strengths.
1st Gen SCBs: The above SCB research lead to what is known as the 1st Gen SC technology characterized by not so
much of an increase in creep and thermal fatigue strengths over the last versions of DS blades (of late 80s) but
improvement in all 4 parameters (oxidation resistance, hot-corrosion resistance, creep and thermal fatigue strengths).
So in lay-man pov having 1st Gen SC blades will not help much in achieving a quantum jump beyond 1450deg C range
TeTs.
2nd and 3rd Gen SCBs:
This is where open-source information starts becoming scanty but these are characterized by degree of Rhenium (one
of the rarest elements with third-highest melting point and highest boiling point) mixture in the alloy itself with 2nd
Gen (CMSX-4) amounting to 3% (w/w) and for 3rd Gen (CMSX-10) to approx. >6% or so.
However, extrapolating the SCB gen and TeT in engine-development world of the advanced western countries, it can
be safely assumed that 3rd Gen SCB is required for >1600deg C TeT (approx 80-100deg C jump for each gen of SCBs).
Now where do we stand as far as the DS and SCB technology is concerned:

What we already knew was that the investment forging for DS blades are in place and the current Kaveri core (Kabini)
achieves the dry (100%) and wet thrust (approx 75%) using them.
In concrete terms it means a TeT of 1476deg C with an OPR of 20-22. The compressor SPR is around 1.6 whilst the aim
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should have been more than 2 what needs to be achieved is approx 27 OPR and 1600deg C TeT.
That would require developing,
1) SCB for HPT - the above picture (from Shivji in AI13) is not a definitive proof as we don't know the SCB gen it
belongs to.
Pls note that 3rd Gen SCBs are required for that level of TeT and if the displayed SCB is from 1st Gen, its of very
little use as the achieved TeT would be lower than what the DS blades in Kabini is achieving currently.
2) The OPR increase in Kabini will necessitate some level of SCB for the later/last stages of the HP Compressors as
well.
The current Ti based alloys for the compressors, though enough for the temperatures to be handled at the 1st few
stages (of the HPC) will not suffice for the later/last stages (Ti oxidation resistance beyond 700deg C is very poor), if
the OPR is go towards 27 or more. And to again maintain the weight of these later stages of the compressors,
compressor-level blisk manufacturing needs to be developed as well.
3) TBC for the HPTs - no info on it from the AI13.
Continuing with the discussion on various gens of SCB etc, pls note that the world didn't really stop at Gen 3 (circa
2000) or thereabouts. Today the talk is about Gen 4 and 5 level SCB where the Re composition (w/w %) is in the
realms of 8% to 9%.
But pls do note, graduating from 2nd Gen (3% of Re) to 3rd Gen (5-6%) SCB metallurgy tech, a major hurdle needed
overcoming - what happened was at Re levels around 5% (w/w) or more the solid solubility limit (wrt the matrix of Re
crystal structure) was exceeded. Which meant that if such a blade is operated in high-temperature environments for
prolonged duration, the excess Re levels may combine with other elements, reducing creep strength (pls note all this
effort of increasing Re content was to increase creep strength in the first place).
This was resolved by introducing Ru (that controls the TCP phase) to the Ni-based single crystal superalloy and
adjusting the composition ratios of other component elements are set to optimal ranges so as to provide the optimal
lattice constant of the matrix ( phase) and the optimal lattice constant of the precipitate (' phase).
The 4th and 5th Gen SCBs are thus characterized not only by higher 8-9% (w/w) of Re levels but also gradually
increasing % of Ru as well (4th Gen 3% Ru and 5th Gen with 4% Ru w/w).
But that's not all.
This continuous adding of a heavy metal like Re meant (worsened by presence of another heavy element W) a higher
specific gravity (g/cm3) of the overall alloy goes up, increasing weight of the blade (and thus the engine as well). This
was overcome by reducing the W composition percentage to 1.5-2% (from a level of about 5-6%). So basically increase
in Re % in the composition was balanced (not linearly though) by corresponding reduction of the W.
And the research continuous...
But I guess the bigger question is, where do we stand wrt indigenous mass-manufacture level of turbine blades (so
complex geometry etc) with these various Gens of SCB technology.
Next will be another lay-man's attempt
to look at OPR shortfall impact on Kaveri.
Ref:
The Superalloys: Fundamentals and Applications By Roger C. Reed
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BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 15:14
Now let's look at the compressor aspects (in a two part series) of the Kaveri ...
Continuing from my previous post of the SCB and Turbine blade Metallurgy related issues wrt Kaveri, here is another
very humble attempt (in 2 parts) of moi, to explain in lay-man terms, of what seems to be the weakness in the
Compressor part of the Kaveri/Kabini which, I dare say, gets suppressed in the hullaballoo of SCB, TeT, BPR and what
not.
The hadiths, scattered as they were in various threads of BR, of the grand-mullah Enqyoobuddin Gas-turbini
needs to completely internalized before any attempt of trying to understand the current Kaveri/Kabini imbroglio so
as per his (Piss BUH) sermon, the only thing that really matters to injiin performance are:
1. Highest possible pressure before heat addition in a combustor (aka OPR impact)
2. Highest possible temperature at end of heat addition post combustor (aka TeT impact)
Some such hadiths can be found here and here - and Vinaji's response to it here. Plus some more can be found here and
here (and many other places pls use the search feature of BR).
Before going on to ramble etc. let me just quote the grand-mullah Gas-turbini again, sermonizing that both are
completely intrinsically linked to each other and any attempt to focus on one while ignoring the other simply doesnt
work.
The following schematic explains it succinctly:
As it can be seen in the graph theres almost an exponential growth in Thrust Values with increasing OPR, but it then
plateaus out and starts falling-off but this plateauing and falling-off can be postponed (and continue with the higher
Thrust values) by suitably increasing the TeT.
[/
Now lets examine the OPR impact part in a little more detail.
For a given core-mass flow (aka the energy available from the upstream turbines) the pressure ratio achieved before
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entering the combustor (and heat getting added there-in), is directly linked to (a) Overall Compressor Design and
(b)Design/Manufacturing finesse of the compressor blades .
There are 3 LP and 6 HP stages in Kabini and it achieves 21-22 OPR, with these 9
stages, which translates to <1.4 Avg Stage Pressure Ratio (aka the pressure ratio achieved by each of these stages).
Contrasted against a contemporary design goal of 30 OPR with 6-7 stages (say in 27atm of a F-414 or 35atm of a F135), that can be achieved with 2.0 Avg stage Pressure Ratio.
So if the Kabini Compressor stages were to be magically (by jiiinn tech grand-mullah Gas-turbini-enqyoobuddin)
made efficient enough to nudge the perf towards a 27-30 OPR values (aka increase in the SPR values trending towards
a 1.9-2.0), it will either help in increasing the thrust levels (both dry and wet) or if the designers choose to maintain
the current thrust levels, they can do the reduction of compressor stages and reduce weight (Kaveri is 150Kg
overweight, IIRC).
IOW, a contemporary design of 30OPR achievement by 6-7 stage-compressor design would have meant Kaveri with a
reduced weight, still meeting the design thrust-weight ratio quite handsomely, at the current design thrust levels.
Conversely, keeping the same 9 (3 LP + 6 HP) stage core-design, if these stages were to be somehow made efficient
enough to attain a contemporary STR in the region of 1.9-2.0, the resultant thrust-levels attained would be higher
than the design level but due to the current exceeding-weight levels, again attaining the ballpark thrust-to-weight
ratio.
But none of these happens in Kaveri and it continues to struggles along with a 1.4 SPR, not because the GTRE folks
didnt aim for it (they actually aimed for a SPR of 1.6 with 88% isentropic efficiency), but more because there were
deficiency in the compressor blade design and manufacturing finesse part (detailed in Part 2).
(contd...)
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 15:16
This brings out the other elephant in the room design and
manufacturing aspects of the compressor stages.
Now, if we look back at the history of compressor stage evolution, there are mainly 3 generations:
Achieved in the 1960s, the multi-stage compressor with tip Mach numbers < 0.8, with
limited achievable compression ratios to about 17.
Achieved towards end of 70s (and early 80s), with tip Mach numbers between 1.0
and 1.1, achieving SPRs of around 1.4-1.5. These were also characterized by slight improvement in blade aspect ratio
and double circular arc-profile blade designs (more on this aspect a little later). The avg temp rise per stage also
doubled (from 21K to 42K, per stage) due to this increase in blade speed, and thus required improvement in
compressor blade metallurgy. Most probably Kaveri compressors are of this gen.
Achieved towards end of 80s (and early 90s), with tip
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Mach numbers trending towards 1.6, achieving SPRs of around 2.0. But the definitive characteristic of this generation
is a wide chord blade design (with blade aspect ratios around 1) and multi circular arc-profile blade designs. Here
again further improvement in compressor blade metallurgy is required as the the avg temp rise per stage went up to
65-75K. Its claimed that the compressors of the EJ200, F119 etc (with OPR of 30 achieved in only 6-7 stages) are of
this gen.
So, as it can be seen in the above classification, talking about the compressor blade design (and manufacturing)
aspects towards improving the efficiency (and the SPR) hinges on the following 4 basic dimension :
1)
2)
(wider chord design) helps in superior aerodynamics in handling the
flow between the blades and the side walls and also in the reduced axial pressure gradient along the side walls
From conventional subsonic aero-foil design to a double circular arc profile to multi-circular arc
3)
profile
to handle higher speed and rise in operating temp
4)
So lets look at more closely at how each of these factors impacts the SPR (so eventually OPR as well). Pls refer to the
following schematic:
1 and 2) Effect of Blade Speed and Blade Aspect Ratio: Not only does the above schematic amply demonstrate that the
Stage Pressure Ratio can be increased by increasing the blade-speed but it also depicts that the rate of SPR increase
(from the gradient comparison of the graphs) goes up quite significantly with the increase in an another parameter
called Work Co-efficient. Furthermore, it also depicts that a blade speed of around the 400m/s (approx. 1.3Mach)
combined with a Work Coefficient of 0.8-1.0 ensures the SPR value gets upto the 1.9-2.0 mark.
But this Work Co-efficient of the blades is dependent on the Aspect Ratio of the compressor blades pls refer to the
following schematic again:
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As it can be clearly seen with the reduction of the blade aspect ratio the work co-efficient increases which, for a given
blade speed, helps increasing the SPR (and thus the OPR as well) (refer to the previous graph as well).
So far so good i.e. the SPR (and thus the OPR, as well) of a compressor can be increased by having low-aspect ratio
(aka wide chord) blades and by somehow moving towards a higher blade speed (i.e. from a subsonic to transonic to
high transonic levels).
3) Effect of Blade Geometry: But an interesting problem happens while trying to increase the blade speed to the
transonic levels the blade geometry starts playing spoilsport. A conventional highly cambered subsonic aerofoil blade
design with high suction surface curvature started producing unacceptably high shock losses and a rapid fall off in SPR.
Furthermore this gets compounded with further spaced co-axial blade stages (a term called solidity ratio of the blade
chord length and distance between the concentric blades, in the same line).
So this was resolved with different blade aerofoil design of first the double circular arc profile and then to multicircular arc profile plus by spacing the compressor stages optimally the solidity was also increased in conjunction
with this. Pls refer to the schematic below:
As it can be seen with the decrease in suction surface curvature brought about by the introduction of double circular
(yellow graph) and multi circular blade (violet graph) profile designs, the efficiency fall can be arrested quite
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dramatically upto certain transonic blade speeds (before the fall becomes too steep) for e.g. Notice the diff in
efficiency levels at 1.3M between subsonic aero-foil design, double circular arc profile design and a multi-circular arc
profile design.
It is reported that there are certain multi circular blade aerofoil designs with zero-curvature (further limiting the
supersonic expansion ahead of the shock and hence the shock intensity and the inherent losses) on the suction surface
allowing blade-speeds to go upto M1.6.
4) Compressor blade Strength and Blade Loading: Increasing blade tip speeds and lower aspect ratio blades comes with
a resultant increase in centrifugal force implying mechanical stress (quite a bit) on the blade root and blade-disc
fixtures. Furthermore increasing the blade tip speed etc will result in stage temperature increase as well (as shown in
the graph at the top). Also low-aspect ratio blades will have addn issues of plate vibrations which can not only create
critical blade resonances but also have potential coupling of vibrational excitations over several stages.
(ps: IIRC, Kaveri had to deal with 3rd order resonance issues which got identified only when it got tested in Germany
at a very late stage, I think not sure).
All of this requires addn blade strength and enhanced temp tolerance pls refer to the following schematic to the
impact on compressor blade loading, blade speed, OPR and number or compressor stages which basically means
higher the blade strength, more blade speed it can accommodate, increasing the OPR but thru lesser number of
stages.
This then brings firmly into the territory of blisk manufacturing, higher thermal loading metallurgy, High speed
milling, Electro-Chemical machining, Linear friction welding etc. etc.
So what does all this mean wrt Kaveri/Kabini?
To increase the OPR from a 21-22 to a more contemporary 27-30 OPR would require progress on several cutting edge
compressor technologies as well as improvement in TeT etc and, more importantly, the compressor shortcomings
shouldnt get overshadowed by the incessant wailing about BPR, SCB and low TeT etc (though equally, if not more,
important and inherently linked aspects, no doubt).
The compressor level improvement in Kaveri/Kabini required, IMVVHO, are as follows:
1) Graduating to a high transonic blade speed regime of say 1.5-1.6M
2) Low aspect ratio (aka wide chord) blade design and manufacturing
3) Manufacturing (mass-level) capability of multi-circular arc profile compressor blades (just drawing a design of it on
a paper wouldnt do)
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4) To cater to the above three developing/acquiring manufacturing capability of increased blade strength and loading
by usage of blisk manufacturing, higher thermal loading metallurgy, High speed milling, Electro-Chemical
machining, Linear friction welding etc. etc.
And last but not the least have proper CeeFDee capability on 3-D NS Flows and other such good and exotic stuff to
test and analyse compressors down to detailed inter-stage data out of the rotating system in order to understand the
aerodynamic and vibrational behaviors.
Essentially, as the grand-mullah Enqyoobuddin Gas-turbini had sermoned many moons back, get hordes of DOO and
PIGS onto this with freedom of destroying a couple of cores, with harsh timelines and supervision and see the results
PissBUH!!
BRF Oldie
18 Jan 2014 20:36
AoA! I deleted my prior post because I felt it had nothing specifically technical to contribute to the stated purpose of
this thread. Didn't see that there is a parallel thread on the Kaveri, where much of what I stated, is already stated.
Thanks, and will be happy to discuss any specifics.
I will repeat that I see no alternative to actually developing engine technology inside India - I mean through original
R&D which means many engine-years' worth of hard failure experience. It is one thing to expect Indian
scientists/engineers to "leap-frog" because we are all so agile on our hindlegs and SDRE, but you cannot "leap-frog"
literally millions of engine-years of accumulated experience of the competition.
So of those 30-odd teams, some at least should focus SERIOUSLY on the NextGen engine. The specs should be
(assuming prototype inside 3 years): T/W > 13; Turbine Inlet Temp >2100K, stage pressure ratio > 2.2?? CounterRotating stages (no stators) for all compressor, fan and turbine spools, ability to make wide-chord, small-hub blades
for transonic conditions. Let the academics tell us what magic is needed, and go and do the magic.
I also said to check the Sikorsky X-2 (a Kamov helo did this years ago) to see counter-rotating rotors. Lots of tough
dynamics and aerodynamics issues to be tackled. Find Indian profs to find the answers to these inside India.
Will ask the question about the P&W Chair elsewhere.
Last edited by UlanBatori on 18 Jan 2014 22:04, edited 1 time in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 21:31
Now that we have seen briefly the Turbine and Compressor shortcomings of the Kaveri, one pertinent question arises
post above) towards tis
as to why GTRE chose a conservative approach (refer to the
development - something bought out precisely by Avarachan-ji.
Maitya, thank you for these very informative posts.

I have a question for you. Given that the Kaveri is to be used in IUSAV (the unmanned strike platform), do you
think that the conservative design choice was the right one? After all, because GTRE went with the conservative
choice, at least India will soon have an engine it can use for other purposes, apart from the Tejas.
Avarachanji, reg the conservative engine technology roadmap for Kaveri, selected by the GTRE folks, well, let me put
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it this way.
There's simply no other choice - 2nd (1a-2b) and 3rd (1b-2a) quadrant choices couldn't have been taken, as in the late
80s (when this decision was being taken) the status of,
1) Prevalent Materials R&D and, more importantly, indigenously available manufacturing and engineering base to
translate these designs to manufactured parts/products etc.
AND
2) Low experience on the mechanical and CFD (from non-flying testbeds like GTX-37U and UB etc.) aspects of an aeroengine design
To give a short example of 1)

How many times here in BR we have heard that if only we could have mastered Blisk-manufacturing technology, most
(if not all) issues of Kaveri would be sorted. What never gets discussed or thought thru is what it really means in terms
of constraints that are being tried to overcome.
- most likely it
I'll not go into too much detail (will reserve that for Material write-up, if it ever gets finished
won't, just like my engine-design related write-ups - all lying around at 50-60% completion level ), let me try to
bring out a small dichotomy (in context of blisk manufacturing usage).
Let's look at a HPT stage of a Turbine - now the blades will be required to withstand 1600-1700deg C temp and tiprotor speed of about 1.5M. But what about the disk - the temp there seldom will reach beyond 800-900 deg C and
speed maybe 0.9M.
Big difference, isn't it? But that's not all.
Look at the picture of an military turbojet/fan HPT, for example that of a F-110 as shown below:
Now if you compare the mass of the disk and that of the blades, it's obvious that the mass of disk is many order-ofmagnitude more than that of the blades.
So between the disk and the blades of the same HPT stage, you have the following:
----------------------------------------------------https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=6726
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Operating Temp -------- 1700degC -------- 850degC

Speed -------------------- 1.5M ------------- 0.9M
Mass ------------------------------------------ easily 10-12 times of Blades (cumulative)
Cycle Fatigue ----------- High -------------- Low
(will explain this in a later post)
So the mechanical pressure due to good-old centrifugal force on a disk is multiple times more than that of the blades but the operating temp regime is also very different.
So for the disk you would ideally be looking for some material with very good tensile ductility, high tensile yield and
ultimate strength (and LCF too - more on this on some other day) - while the temp operating environment gives you a
lot of leeway (compared to blades), so much so you can get away with even equiaxed-casted materials.
But for the blades the requirements are high Thermal Mechanical Fatigue (TMF) resistance (aka higher melting
points), Creep-rupture strength and HCF - while lot of leeway on mechanical strength aspects like tensile
yield/strength and ductility.
So for the blades you are constrained to have casted materials that have directionally oriented grains parallel to airfoil
axis (aka DS or SC) - but that's not all, due to high-temp operating env, it needs to have a good ability to accept TBC
as well (plus higher oxidation resistance properties - again more on this on a later day). But the operating word is
"casted" alloys.
And there-in lies the problem.
As casted alloys generally have lower tensile properties, worser ductility and lesser homogeneity making them
unsuitable for a disk application - to have those kinds of mechanical properties you need wrought alloys.
So, coming back to the topic of blisk manufacturing etc - you are basically asking/looking for an "integral"
manufacturing process where the disk part is made of wrought superalloy, while the blade part being from casted
superalloy.
This should give us an idea about what challenging the material/manufacturing R&D and engineering aspect could be.
I'll later bring out a suitable example from 2 as well.
But coming back to your original point about design choices - this above example, would be sufficient to demonstrate
that how many options the GTRE folks would have had then, given our experience on integral casting etc, to reject
the possibility of blisked turbine stage development route. Instead, it would have been less riskier to have accepted
the then prevalent bolted-blades-on-disk philosophy and live with the resultant compromise on the TeT itself. And
that's what the GTRE folks did.
Pls note the above example is not some "virtual" one - something quite similar actually happened with Kaveri where-in
the in-house developed HPT disk had to be rejected (when the TeT was increased, as the blades were found to be able
to accept a few tens of degrees C more TeT) and import (from USA) the HPT disks (while the HPT blades remained
indigenous DS ones). But that story for another day.
maitya, are you sure about the LPT disk from the US? My understanding is that hot section parts for the Kaveri
come from Snecma.
merlinji, IIRC the Kaveri/Kabini LPT discs were made from a cast-wrought nickel base superalloy UDIMET-720Li
forging billets and bars imported from Special Metals Corp, USA (and before anybody gets "concerned" about sanctions
and imports etc, note they have a subsidiary in B'Lore - including subsidiaries in Fr, Gr, UK, HKG, China, S'Pore etc
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etc.).
Related Factoid 1:
Related Factoid 2:
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Jan 2014 22:25
It is completely justifiable to get frustrated at the non-delivery of the almost 2-decade+ old Kaveri program, not
yielding the desired results - but while criticising GTRE for this failure we need to contrast with what they have
achieved so far and against what type of constraints. Here goes ...
...
As far as engines are concerned, we've all known how inadequate efforts towards Kaveri have been and but I was
sick of watching everyone after AI-13,
. More years are being wasted
while the world is pursuing and achieving next generation technologies.
We're only good for a begging bowl, hoping one of the other engine makers will just give us the required tech by
way of consulting contract.
...
JTullji, while this angst is somewhat justified vis--vis Kaveri (and GTRE), the bolded part above (about them being
and
etc) is not true.
IMO a better and more balanced perspective is required while dissecting teh Kaveri development process (there are
series of posts in that thread, both before and after that post-series, which delves into this aspect).
And to start the ball rolling, let me make very bold stmt - and one can only aim for a tech gen provided a baseline level of the
required capability and experience is available.
But before we go there let's try and understand various Turbofan Gens wrt Turbine (specifically HPT) blade material
(Alloys) and their manufacturing (casting) technology evolution. The following schematic brings that out quite
succintly:
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As you may have noticed the gradual increase in TeT values with improvement of blade alloy composition and their
casting technologies (Equiaxed - DS - SC). This increase has directly seen the not only the TWR level of various
Turbofans but also their intrinsic efficiency (better SFC etc).
Also further notice in mid-to-late 80s and early 90s the contemporary casting technology was DS (e.g. in M53, RD33
etc etc) - the late 90s and 1st decade of 2000s saw SC blades getting perfected and productionised and finally
becoming operational (e.g. GE F414, M88-2 etc).
So with Kaveri, getting conceptualised in mid-80s, the choice of DS blades for the HPT is all but natural given the
contemporary turbine technolgy being used world-wide - with an aim of technological progression to the SC blades as
an natural evolution path in 2000s etc.
In fact, a contrarian view can be, we aimed too high a tech gen (given the technological baseline and engineering
capability - both on gas-turbine CFD and material tech) with Kaveri and failed in achieving it by a whisker. An ab-intio
F-404 gen (so, the 3rd Gen Turbojet maybe 1st Gen military Turbofan) is just too high to aim for given the
indigenous turbojet/turbofan technological and material engineering capability that we possess.
But wed start somewhere, isnt it? And any ab-intio tech dev is inherently as-risky-as-it-ever-gets and Kaveri is no
exception.
And its always better to aim higher and take-on the long and painful grind then to just go for what is available (or
import) and maybe make good press out of it a rhetorical question can be, would IAF ever accepted a GTX-37UB level
engine (so required Thrust achieved but very poor SFC and weight) for LCA ?
Moreover, like all technological advancements, the next Gen of technology is more achieved by incremental advances
over the previous Gen technological levels. For example, you will notice that the 4th Gen F414 level (aka F414-EPE or
F414-GE-INS6 for LCA Mk-II), are based on 3rd Gen F404 tech. Similarly, on the material technology front, notice the
diff between 3rd (CMX-4) and 4th Gen (CMX-10) SCBs (except for Re composition increase, and the corresponding
balancing of other heavy elements of the alloy, not much of difference between the two gens) some details of which
can be found here.
So, IMVHO, if we pursue Kaveri devt program to it's logical conclusion of full-range-of-FTB tests etc, we'd have
mastered the 3rd Gen Turbojet (maybe 1st Gen military Turbofan) technology end-to-end.
This would enable to baseline the CFD design aspects of the Core, it's Thermodynamic design and interplay and the
mechanical and manufacturing technology of the Compressors/Combustor/Turbine components.
Based on which the 4th Gen engine etc development can be taken up.
And regarding your point about

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- well, that's a huge improvement on it's own, as basically until this years' AI, we were not even sure if we are
able to manufacture any SCBs (forget about 2nd, 3rd, 4th Gen SCB etc) in the first place.
Pls refer to this talk by GTRE director, T. Mohan Rao, in AI09 here notice, how he points out the basic future thrust
areas that need working on and I quote,
a. BLISK - integrated single Blade and Disk

c. Thermal Barrier Coatings - TBC - very critical for high temp engine operation.
That was back in 2009 and in 2013, we have a photo of an indigenously developed SCB blade - yes, we dont know yet
which gen it is, and what kind of thermal fatigue, creep resistance and mechanical pressure it can withstand but
isnt that a huge progress, even if we conservatively assume it to be 2nd Gen SCB etc.
BRF Oldie
18 Jan 2014 22:45
Maitya: What is the point of having the massive disks to hold the HP turbine blades? Is it only strength or is it the
flywheel effect? IOW, why hasn't someone replaced that TFTA metal disc with a much lighter SDRE structure based on,
say, concentric rings with spokes? Seems like they could cut the engine mass a lot?
BR Mainsite Crew
19 Jan 2014 16:21
Having understood somewhat as to where stand on the Kaveri program, it may be worthwhile to look into which
direction the program needs to take henceforth. But first a look into the role of various foreign engine design houses
and consultants needs a brief examination.
Maitya,
...
The Russians are also not #1
because despite their political plus points, the AL55I case shows how unreliable they can be from time to time,
besides which all their tier 1 resources are already on AL31 derivatives & the PAKFA engine programs.
The only approach available seems to be the go it alone but with multiple partners sort of thing. Not ideal, but
perhaps, if only we can coordinate things, might get us better tech & knowledge versus taking somebody else's
design for local assembly.
KaranMji, first the disclaimer:
Not sure how much approaching MTU would help at the current stage of maturity Kaveri is in - unless MTU (or for that
matter any other established turbofan design house), agrees to part away with their crown jewels wrt
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1. Compressor Stage manufacturing technology vis--vis 30+ OPR achievement in a 6 stage layout
2. 1650-1700deg C TeT Turbine blade/disc manufacturing capability in an industrial scale
In fact, since you mention MTU, pls note that the GTRE folks already did so and reached out to the MTU right at the
start of the program. And they did so to almost all established Engine houses across the globe for consultancy, peervalidation and many times, to import critical components, so that the engine itself can be progressed (and later these
components can be replaced with indigenous components, a standard practice for such kind of ab-initio major
programme anywhere in the world).
Plus, this being ab initio programme, there were sometimes multiple agencies being approached for the same stuff.
The following list is maybe a bit dated info (around 2002-04), but to get a fair idea on the spread of help-beingrequested by GTRE, here's a list of agencies approached by them for various consultative help:
MTU, Germany
1. Over speed & Burst Margin Test on K6HP Turbine Rotor Assembly
2. Over speed & Burst Margin Test on K6LP Turbine Rotor Assembly
Russia
Via 'Rosoboronexport"
1. Exploratory Altitude Testing of Kaveri Engine
2. Exploratory Altitude Testing of Kaveri Engine
3. Fan Casing Containment Test for Kaveri Engine
4. Testing for Main Combustor at Sea level and Altitude conditions
Via Gromov Flight Research Institute
1. Technical services for Kaveri Engine
Test Devices INC, USA
1. Over speed & Burst margin test on K6HPC Rotor assembly
2. Over speed & burst margin test on K6 Fan Rotor assembly
3. Design, Analysis, Testing & Optimization of Damper for the LP Turbine Rotor Blade
Belgium
1. Dynamic Analysis under Blade off condition of Kaveri engine
Applied Technology Consultants Ltd., UK
1. Dynamic Analysis under Blade off condition of Kaveri engine
2. Consultancy for Reheat System Design Review/Audit
3. Consultancy for HP Turbine Risk Analysis/Review
4. Consultancy for Weight Reduction Study
5. Consultancy for Thermal and Hydraulic Modelling of Kaveri Lubrication System
6. Consultancy for Kaveri Fan Aerodynamic and Mechanical Design Review/Audit and enhancement.
7. Consultancy for Critical Design Review of the Kaveri Engine Project
8. Consultancy for Accelerated Simulated Mission Endurance Test (ASMET) Cycle and test schedule definition and development programme
integration.
9. Consultancy for Kaveri Integrated Test, Development and Procurement programmes
10. Consultancy for Kaveri PFRT Fan Aerodynamic Design 3D Blade-to-Blade and Viscous Analysis
11. Consultancy for Kaveri K4 Build 06 HP Compressor Blade Stage 1 Failure Investigation and Follow-up
12. Consultancy for Review and Proposal for the Resolution of Vibration Problems in the Kaveri Engine
13. Consultancy for Design Review and Audit of High Temperature High Pressure Heat Transfer Rig
14. Consultancy for Kaveri K5 & K8 Compressor Blade Stage I vibration & Rub Investigation Problems in the Kaveri Engine
But the point I'm trying to make is, if you look closely at this list, most of these help were in the form of consultative
support for design validation, issue/failure confirmation and the required resolution approach - plus of course help in
testing various aspects of a turbofan.
Rarely will you find some help in the form of a major turbofan component/system being put forward.
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In fact, it's not that GTRE were not aware of the challenges on the compressor and turbine design and manufacturing
aspects, in an ab-initio programme like this. But they were also aware that stuff like Turbine (both HPT and LPT)
Blades and Discs, the very heart (and thus most difficult and riskiest aspect) of a turbofan will not be available from
anybody. So the whole focus was on them while they wanted the relatively non-strategic compressor stages (at least
the fan stages) be imported from Germany (IIRC from MTU) - i.e. they wanted to do the design of the fan blades and
wanted MTU to manufacture them.
End result was that it was denied first with reasoning that GTRE's design was just too complicated for them to
manufacture - and when GTRE simplified the blade design (to a lesser efficient one) , then the reasoning was that the
volume being these being asked is commercially non-viable to be manufactured. GTRE was then forced to manufacture
it and most probably was forced to settle with a further sub-optimal compressor design as the design had to match
with the indigenous manufacturing capability available then with MIDHANI et all.
So yes, morale of the story is, collaborate we must but when it comes to the cutting-edge turbofan-core design and
manufacturing technology capability building, we were basically on our own. Irony is had GTRE aimed for a lessen gen
core, maybe just maybe, this collaboration-story would have been different.
And more ironical aspect is that when the (currently achieved) dry thrust was in danger due to the indigenous LPT
blades and LPT disc integration challenges (the disc was simply giving up while blades were able to cope with the RPM
at around 1400deg C TeT), it was USA who supplied the LPT disc and saved the day.
...
Plan B is to reduce the weight of Tejas on a fast track basis and get Kaveri meet it's damn design values. They are
trying to create new alloys to reduce weight but there is no public indication of the same so I guess it's not in the
priority list which should have been the case.
SagarG-ji, what is required urgently is reduction of Kaveri weight to it's desired design goal (950Kg - it's currently 120150Kg or 12-15% overweight) an achieve the 76N/Kg TWR as it was originally envisioned. LCA airframe weigth
reduction etc, if it happens, is well-and-good but Kaveri in it's present form will not make it to LCA - maybe,
optimistically a Kaveri MK-II for LCA Mk-II later stages, but we will cross that bridge once we reach there.
Future Path:Currently, one path is to pursue this Kaveri engine weight-reduction which in itself is an extremely
challenging task - as such large-scale weight reduction means playing around with the Core both material-wise and
design-wise.
For example, the heaviest part of a turbojet is its compressor stages, specifically the Fan stages (LPCs). Reducing a
stage there would surely ensure the weight being bought down drastically but the basic engine performance would also
takes a nose-dive as the Overall Compressor Pressure Ratios (total of Stage PRs of each of the stages) will also reduce
significantly.
So the trick is reducing a stage without reducing the Overall Compressor PR - which essentially means increasing the
SPR of the remaining Stages from the current level. And there are 3 ways of achieving this:
1) Higher blade speed - maybe in the realm of 1.5-1.6M
2) Low aspect ratio (aka wide chord) blade design
3) Multi-circular arc profile compressor blades
Pls refer to this earlier posts on Compressor Blade Design and Manufacturing aspects for further details.
But the above three would mean developing/acquiring manufacturing capability of increased blade strength and
loading by usage of blisk manufacturing, higher thermal loading metallurgy, High speed milling, Electro-Chemical
machining, Linear friction welding etc. etc.
Absolute cutting-edge of material and manufacturing technology (technology which nobody will part with), and we are
simply not there.
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And before berating GTRE et all, pls note that the current Russian progression path of 117 Series to T-50 2nd stage
engines is just that (from atleast last 10-odd years, and are still 5-6 years from achieveing it). Take that!!
Alternate Path:The other option path (iterative) is,

1) to keep the engine core as-is and first flight qualify it - this will baseline the basic engine Core Aerodynamic and
Thermodynamic design (and it's other performance parameters).
2) Then go for a slightly higher core inlet dia (so increased mass-flow), larger Compressor and larger Turbine stages
(so increased weight) and brute-force increase the Thrust levels (both dry and wet). At this stage vital parameters like
OPR, SFC, TeT etc may not have improved significantly (though the Thrust and weight levels would have increased).
3) Then try and improve the Compressor and turbine efficiencies (maybe drop a compressor stage etc) by incorporating
higher blade speed, Low-aspect-ratio blades, Multi-circular-arc blade profiles, 4th Gen SCB etc.
4) And finally go for Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC - for the hot sections like Turbines etc) and Polymer Matrix
Composites (PMC for the cold sections like the later-compressor stages) based improvements.
Pls note these phases are not strictly sequential as achieving each phase goals would require some aspects of Pt3 and
Pt4 above realizations.
A variable-cycle engine can come thereafter.
A good 1-2 decades of solid R&D with almost unlimited funding - or be dependent on 100h-TBO hand-me-down stuff.
BRF Oldie
21 Jan 2014 01:20
maitya, all good stuff but.. a few points:

1. I think the new F-135 engine uses counter-rotating compressor and turbine stages. What this does is to (a) eliminate
the stator blade weight (gyan in basic courses: stator does no work), (b) correct the swirl and recover the swirl
momentum, (c) reduce the rpm needed for a given relative velocity, and (d) in net effect, increase the SPR
substantially. The price paid is steep: there must be larger secondary losses, vortex-interactions etc. Which is where
hard, hard R&D comes in. So pushing for higher SPR by going ever higher in tip Mach and RPM is not the answer, the
radical option is the counter-rotating stage.
2. I see that the Unducted Turbofan (aka PropFan) is making a comeback. This may not be relevant for fighter planes,
but is for transports. Also uses exotic flowfield solvers and structural wizardry, i.e., hard R&D.
3. T/W of 76N/kg means only 7.75. Long way from the 12 claimed for the above, and you can see why those radical
decisions will lead to huge weight savings.
4. The GE version of the F-135 (which got killed) is sitting out there, ready for tech transfer/export orders. Wonder if
there is any move to get that to India as a string tied to the F404/414s? Or at least as a sample/demo exhibition/tour
like the 5 Russian GSLV engines...
What I am saying is that the parameter playground for the Modern TF may be far away from where the Kaveri is
playing today. BTW, I have not paid attention to this whole field except for seeing a few news clips (and doing some
in-depth soul-searching to justify T/W of 12 for some other reason) for many saal, so don't worry about my level of
inside gyan.
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BR Mainsite Crew
21 Jan 2014 23:53
maitya, all good stuff but.. a few points:

1. I think the new F-135 engine uses counter-rotating compressor and turbine stages. What this does is to (a)
eliminate the stator blade weight (gyan in basic courses: stator does no work), (b) correct the swirl and recover
the swirl momentum, (c) reduce the rpm needed for a given relative velocity, and (d) in net effect, increase the
SPR substantially. The price paid is steep: there must be larger secondary losses, vortex-interactions etc. Which is
where hard, hard R&D comes in. So pushing for higher SPR by going ever higher in tip Mach and RPM is not the
answer, the radical option is the counter-rotating stage.
...
Saar, what you say above are all fundamental facts and can't be argued against - but what we are trying below is (in
absence of any direct confirmation from GTRE et all) to do an educated second-guess and come out with a few (a tiny
list) of reasons as to where we are today and what needs to be done to progress this program.
But for the benefit of lay-man (you and other learned maulanas may pls skip the following sub-section), the gas
dynamics within a rotor-stator system of a typical compressor needs understanding first.
Yes, stators (or "stationary fan") are basically there to build up pressure by converting the KE from the preceding
paired-rotor-blade of the compressor stage (and the preceding rotor increases the relative KE of the flow-stream by
adding "swirl" to the flow).
Note: Addition of energy to the flow-stream by the rotors happens because:
1) The total energy carried in the flow (called Stagnation Pressure) is sum-total of the internal energy (called static pressure) and the kinetic
energy associated with the velocity of the air-stream (Hint: good old Bernoulli Equation)
2) As usual, there are three perpendicular components of flow-stream velocity (radial, tangential and axial) - and the KE component addition
by the rotor is sum total of kinetic energy associated with each component of velocity (squared).
3) The rotor adds "swirl" to the flow increasing its angular momentum i.e. the KE addition happens due to the increase in tangential velocity
component, mentioned above
Once the KE addition has been done by the rotor, the paired stator (which is static, and is "hung" from the core wall)
extracts energy from the preceding-rotor swirl and coverts it into pressure (thus relative flow-stream velocity
decreases) i.e. it converts the kinetic energy of the swirl to internal energy, raising the static pressure of the flow. Do
note, no work (or any energy addition) can be done by stators as they are static - they are pure convertors.
So the thumb-rule to remember is that the moving-rotors increases velocity (and thus KE) of the flow-stream while the
static-stators slows it down and increases the pressure. So, the velocity-pressure profile in a multi-stage compressor
looks something like the following schematic.
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What UlanBatori-ji is saying that "why-phor do you need the stators, hain jee?". All you need is to increase the static
pressure of the flow isn't it - so, just get another rotor stage (maybe the next stage one) and make it rotate in the
opposite direction of the "primary rotor" and recover the swirl momentum na. This counter rotating rotor stage will
also add it's KE component and increase the velocity of the flow-stream (with a 90-deg phase of the post-1st-rotorstage etc.) - two in one, ek ke sath ek free.
Remove the dead-wood stators and save weight (and there-by stop scratching that head of yours and mumbling "135Kg
overweight engine" etc.)
And mind-you this is actually got implemented in an operational engine - so pls, no excuses and hand-waiving of "just
a theoretical concept" etc.
Problem is, for a certified DOO like moi, there's absolutely no theoretical counter-logic to this, that I can think of (and
as they taught us in the good-old-madrassa, no theoretical counter-logic is sure-shot sign of laziness etc!!).
Couple of small fly-in-the-ointment points though:

1) How do we actually implement it - by introducing a pair of counter-rotating concentric shafts is it? So one counterrotating concentric shaft corresponding to the HPT-driven shaft and another similar one for the LPT-driven shaft, is it?
Do we possess the level of manufacturing maturity required to come up with such a complex gearing mechanism etc we are no US after all!!
Plus what about the weight-penalty of introducing new shafts etc (maybe not of the same scale as that saved by
removing the stators, but still there'll be considerable weight penalty).
2) What about the secondary losses (UlanBatori-ji mentions that as well) - the losses within a compressor stages are
mainly of the following types:
a) Disc friction loss (loss is from skin friction on the discs that house the blades of the compressors. This loss varies
with different types of discs)
b) Incidence loss (loss is caused by the angle of the air and the blade angle not being coincident. The loss is at a
minimum to about an angle of 4deg, after which the loss increases rapidly)
c) Blade loading and profile loss (loss is due to the negative velocity gradients in the boundary layer, which gives rise
to flow separation)
d) Skin friction loss (loss is from skin friction on the blade surfaces and on the annular walls)
e) Clearance loss (loss is due to the clearance between the blade tips and the casing)
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f) Wake loss (loss is from the wake produced at the exit of the rotary)
g) Stator profile and skin friction loss (loss is from skin friction and the attack angle of the flow entering the stator)
We most probably will dwell with these in further details at a later stage, but for the current topic in hand, pls note
except for (a) and (g) above all of the other needs very careful optimization via blade design (wrt intra-blade CFD
etc). Specially (e) Clearance Loss (wrt no Stators as a "protective" boundary to prevent spilling of vortices etc to the
next rotor stage), can be a major problem to master.
Indranil and other Aerodynamic and CFD experts can comment more on this aspect.
3) And then there is this solidity issue (between two consecutive rotors with complex shapes) to deal with - this
becomes more complex not only due to the permissible attachment of blades closer to each other (when stators are
not there), but also due to the blade-shape induced eddys and vortices as well (pls note generally speaking vortices can
be very beneficial for energizing a flow and thus prevent departure etc - but will the effort required to turn it by a 90deg phase by the next rotor, worth it (wrt the counter-rotating arrangement being discussed here).
So the short answer is I dont know and I doubt without solid and extensive R&D, modeling, studies we will ever know
its not for nothing that it took approx a dacade+ for GE and PW to come up with this concept and operationalizing
it.
But the bigger (and more pertinent question is), if this is a better and next-gen path to reduce compressor and overall
engine weight and efficiency, why isnt GTRE pursuing it? Surely, if we the armchair designers (except maybe
UlanBatoriji) can think of this, surely career turbojet designers and engineers in GTRE must have long back considered
it.
A simple google search on contra-rotating rotors in an axial turbofan yields a plethora of papers and patent related
publications couldnt find anything from GTRE folks (of course Id admit didnt spend enough time looking or
searching etc).
None of us would know and can only speculate :
As Id tried to speculate in the Kaveri Design Choice Rational post earlier, Id speculate its pure question of riskappetite (Id not subscribe the laziness and institutional-inertia just yet lack of initiative yes maybe, evident
from lack of even theoretical papers or studies on it from Indian entities etc.)
In a scenario GTRE charted that path (e.g. like charting the 3rd Gen SCB instead of DS blade path that they chose etc.)
right from the start, in the event they failed and had to redesign with Fan-and-HPC stages to more contemporary
rotor-stator-paired stages, we (the inherent argumentative-and-naval-gazing Indians that we are) would have bayed
for their blood and labeled them as failures, incompetent, parasites etc etc (shivji has a more comprehensive
list).
Not that, they have fared any better today in our so-called public scrutiny, but in 1980-90s they simply couldnt have
chosen such a risky path.
But, at the same time, Im in the process of getting appalled (thanks again UlanBatoriji for being the margdarshak as
you have been always, if I may add) as to this lack of initiative to forward-think and technology forecast and atleast
commission theoretical studies etc. And more than that if they could have done something similar wrt material tech
via CMC and PMC stuff why not in the rotary-CFD area?
Instead the whole focus by GTRE seems to be the old sledge-hammer approach of:
1) Increase TeT with better HPT (and LPT) blades (and disks) material (and casting tech) and extract more rotational
energy and get the blade-tip speed and thus increase the SPR somewhat. This path has very less head-room though as
beyond 1.6M etc, its unknown-unknown state.
2) Try the Composite route and try and get the FAN weight reduced (FANs are the heaviest aspect of the engine, IIRC).
Difficulty and constraints of contemporary CNC machines towards complex-geometry shaping of the composites would
be the limiting factor.
Pls note that, Im not trying to propose that we shouldnt the above 2 by all means we should. But as a parallel riskmitigation and also from future tech dev strategy, we should seriously look at this contra-rotating compressor bladehttps://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=6726
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based stages approach as well (cmon at least a feasibility study is needed isnt it).
But before we wrap up, I think we should analyse this increased compressor blade tip speed path (pt. 1 above) a bit
(because theres an increased mass-flow bit inherent in it as well).
Fig 1 represents a typical Compressor rotor stage and how KE is built-up across it and Fig 2 represents the velocity
triangles across such a compressor stage comprising of a rotor and a stator (theres an entry vane aspect as well, but
not all compressor stages will have a entry vane they are typical to the LP stages of a compressor). These velocity
vectors are used for deducing the various formulas.
Fig 3 is the corresponding Euler turbine equation and is very important as it depicts the relationship between
Stagnation Temperature rise across a compressor stage wrt the corresponding rotor Tip Speed increase and mass flow
change through the stage. As it can be clearly seen that the stagnation temperature rise across the stage increases
with the tip Mach number squared, and for fixed positive blade angles, decreases with increasing mass flow. Fig 4 is
the corresponding schematic representation.
So what does the above representation mean from a Kaveri perspective. Well, as Ive mentioned above, therell be an
attempt to better the current Compressor SPRs of Kaveri via TeT improvements. This will essentially mean increase
the compressor blade rotor tip speed which, as the above schematic shows, will result in increase in ambient
temperature across the compressor stages.
Increasing temperature on the compressor stages will mean breaching the 650-700deg C (or so) max operating temp
point of the Ti-based Compressor blades. So we should see an attempt towards junking the current Ti-based blades
and switching to Equiaxed-casted Ni-alloy based compressor blades atleast for the later HPC stages (where the peak
temp will be reached).
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However, therell be also another parallel attempt towards increasing the mass-flow by slightly increasing the dia
(mainly to inflate the Thrust levels) this will have an indirect attempt of cooling (relatively) these compressor stages
(as depicted in the equation and graph above).
Interesting times ahead!!
PS: The rotor-stator dynamics in a turbine is exactly opposite of compressor discussion.
PPS: UlanBatoriji, sorry I didnt get enough time to think-thru your other points as of now.
BRF Oldie
22 Jan 2014 00:20
Now u r getting into the reasons why in war there is no "you were close second". I think in WW2 the ingineurs had 2
choices:
a) solve dem equations and invert the matrices and make the dang thing work perfectly. By subah tomorrow.
b) At subah tomorrow, eeph not done, pick up rifle and get on truck headed to phrontline onlee.
And if you made a chalta hai solution, and it breaks down on the trench line, WELL!!! go out and fix it there.
As James Bond and Mullah Archimedes said: "You only live do bar. Phirsht the din when u were born. And doosri bar
when Houristan stares u in the musharraf."
So this is why there is a "Working Injun" using counter-rotating etc. People with Aag in the Belly. All the points u
mention are baad issues:
1) How do we actually implement it - I think there are some planetary gear designs (e.g. on Propfan designs of the
late 1980s) and maybe just concentric shafts, I don't know. Remember, we want counter-rotating STAGES, not entire
machines. Stage ek goes left, stage do goes right. Stage teen goes left...
Weight-penalty of introducing new shafts etc. Sure, and gears are esp. troublesome.
2) What about the secondary losses
a) Disc friction loss: hire Mullah Archimedes-bin-Tribology
b) Incidence loss : aerodynamics/ adjustment by experiment
c) Blade loading and profile loss: actually blades may be thinner because centrifugal stress is lower because rpm is
lower.
d) Skin friction loss: yes, but much smaller because rpm is half so dynamic pressure is lower.
e) Clearance loss: yes, but all have it, they just let the machine rub itself in and make a thin wear-slot, right? sharp
file, use EyeEyeTee Phitting Shop Gulag experience.
But
f) Wake loss: think interaction of wake with succeeding rotor stage. More interesting. Meaning Research $$$.
hey, if you manage to make the leading edge vortex from a curved low-AR blade come over the surface of a
succeeding blade, you may manage to get a much higher stage pressure ratio! Many saal worth of people staring at See
Eff Dee plots, and then testing in lab.
g) Stator profile and skin friction loss. Ha! No stator! Actually it may turn out that profile drag comes down because
the flow may self-adjust on counter-rotating stages, vs. having to separate at high incidence on a fixed-geometry
stator. Just a wild guess, but based on empirical evidence: Eeph say A.May or Dr. Shrilleen stand in a wind, shawl will
stream straight back and flutter in separated flow around Bluff Body. But if M. Bedi walks in a breeze like a counterrotating blade heading through the flow over the prior stage blade, the dynamics of the rapid swaying motion make
the sari cling to the blade design.
I think this is a version of Co-Anda Ephekt.
Again: I am just making wild guesses. Noooo idea how F-135 or GE version are done.
P.S. Biggest cited superstition about counter-rotating (reason cited when they cruelly dissed my precious experimental
proposal in the late 80s/early 90s, result of many many moons of sitting up with smoke coming thru ears) is
"instability". I flunked all the rotor dynamics classes (if I ever took any), but as I hear it, there will be many many
resonant frequencies and you can't hope to damp them all. But the proof is that the F-135 is working, and the X-2 is
flying, so I think they have somehow circumvented this superstition. And that's why the Unducted Turbofan aka
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Propfan seems to be making a comeback. Subjecting such an engine to the impact of a 9-G landing, and high-AOA
operation... well, they are doing it.
BRF Oldie
22 Jan 2014 03:11
Don't know if halal - if not will move to the academic thread.

Google Scholar search for counter-rotating:
Counter rotating fans An aircraft propulsion for the future?
Also (no url)
Schnell, R, Wallscheid, L. Unsteady Blade Pressure Distributions on a Counter Rotating Propfan at On- and Off-Design
Conditions. 15th International Symposium on Air Breathing Engines, ISABE, Bangalore, India, AIAA, 2001. 110
FAN ENGINE WITH COUNTER ROTATING GEARED
Aircraft engine with inter-turbine engine frame supported counter rotating ...
Counter rotating turbofan engine
Counter rotating fan aircraft gas turbine engine with aft booster
Analysis of Technical Challenges in Vaneless Counter-Rotating Turbomachinery
BR Mainsite Crew
22 Jan 2014 03:48
On the contra rotating topic I think GTRE took path of least resistance , for someone building their first military TF
engine for a single engine fighter AC it is obvious to have chosen a path well trodden. By the way despite lakhs of
hours of live flight test data and testing even likes of Kamov have not been able to rule out the rotor blade collision in
their designs.
Also F-35 is a different use case it requires contra rotating fans for low speed handling and hovering capabilities ,
conceptually it is like the RR Pegasus engine onboard the Harrier only much more advanced. LCA or CTOL ACs do not
need to have such control over gyroscopic effects caused by direction of air flow.
BRF Oldie
22 Jan 2014 09:18
[Potential drawbacks of Compressor Contra-rotating Rotor Stages]

Couple of small fly-in-the-ointment points though:
1) How do we actually implement it - by introducing a pair of counter-rotating concentric shafts is it? So one
counter-rotating concentric shaft corresponding to the HPT-driven shaft and another similar one for the LPTdriven shaft, is it?
Do we possess the level of manufacturing maturity required to come up with such a complex gearing mechanism
etc - we are no US after all!!
Plus what about the weight-penalty of introducing new shafts etc (maybe not of the same scale as that saved by
removing the stators, but still there'll be considerable weight penalty).
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Zimble onlee.. Cut & Paste, Beg & Borrow, and rebersh yin jin ear what you have. I mean, we already have the
Pigasses oops Pegauses engine from the Harrier, which uses a contra rotating spool. Cut paste and copy that yin-jinearring from that !
But that is too late for the Kaveri. Maybe for the next YinJin. The priority should be to get the current Kaveri to upto
design specs, for that the problem is materials. Get that in , the rest will fall in place.
BRFite
22 Jan 2014 23:27
Maulana UlanBatori,
Along the lines of the (GE) unducted propfan, is the (P&W) geared turbofan that is being pitched as the "next best
thing since sliced double-roti aka CFM56". Doesn't have contra-rotating spools IIRC, but planetary gearbox for speed
reduction like a turboprop. Might have similarities to the F-135, since they're both from karkhana-e-P&W.
BRF Oldie
23 Jan 2014 18:57
I was noting the evolving noise about the 5th Gen Fighter. Clearly there is going to be a spate of articles from
completely unbiased ppl who just happen to work in think-tanks funded by US, Oiropean entities saying how the IAF
just HATES the Russian design. But I want to point out something: If you and your 6th coujin competitor, both are able
to develop a fighter engine with T/W of 12 (as on the F-35) then would you not try to do at least as well on the 5th
Gen or 6th Gen? What chance will a fighter with engines of T/W 8 or 9 have against you? This is a strong reason why
there HAS to be at least a tech demonstrator engine of Indiangenius design that comes somewhere in the vicinity of 12
T/W. It can be half vaporware, but hopefully beyond the Photoshop stage. It will at least drive the design of the 5th
Gen towards something that has a hope when it eventually comes out. So someone needs to be looking at designs that
can get to those levels. And I think counter-rotating spools are pretty-much a must if you are going with axial
turbomachines designs at all (as opposed to what? Djinn-Relativistic Compression?). Plus one has to build
manufacturing facilities that can at least turn out 1 prototype engine every 6 months? So in 5 years (while they do
yada-yada-yada and develop the RFQ) 10 iterations will have been done and 9 engines tested to destruction with data
and computations done. This worked on GSLV, I don't see why it can't work on aircraft engines. Think about it - if the
rpm is low enough because of counter-rotation, maybe you don't need Single Crystal or Blisk? Maybe all of the LP
compressor and fan can be composite? Wonder what it takes to do a 3-D printed complete stage.. at least at 25%
scale.
BRFite
26 Jan 2014 22:12
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Last edited by Indranil on 27 Jan 2014 01:01, edited 1 time in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
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27 Jan 2014 16:27
Having looked into the design aspect of turbofan/Kaveri, it's hightime we explore/analyse the other very crucial
aspect of engine development - the Material aspect.
(
As we have seen in the preceding posts, the thrust and efficiency improvement in Turbojet/Turbofan engines has
moved lock-step with the core material design and the corresponding manufacturing technology evolution. A key
indicator towards it is the Thrust, SFC etc improvement of the overall engines vis--vis first the turbine blade material
evolution (from FE based to Ni-Fe based alloys to Nickel based alloys) and then thru the generational changes in the
manufacturing methodology (Wrought > Conventionally Cast > Directionally Solidified > Single Crystal) using these
alloys. So in the following series of posts Id attempt to build up the necessary context of the various turbofan
component-use material properties and their manufacturing technological aspects.
The material need of turbojet/turbofan is vastly different from other type of engines mainly due to the mechanical
forces its required to withstand at very high ambient temperature regime. The mechanical behavior and strength
characteristics of most of the metals (well come to the why part later) vary very wildly beyond a certain temperature
regime and the reason for that is, for most metals,
1) at high temperatures, the time duration of load application becomes very significant differentiator towards its
material strength (and for the same material, strengths at low temperatures are usually not a function of time)
2) oxidation (so, conversion of metal atoms to its oxides) happens more rapidly at high temperature
So, except for obvious stuff like metals weakening at higher temperature etc., there is this added dimension of
combined-impact of time-duration (prolonged) of the load and that of the higher temperature, which needs careful
consideration. The following schematic brings it out quite vividly:
Thus if a metal is subject to a load that is considerably lesser than what would have broken it at room temperature,
for a longer duration and at a high temperature, then the metal would begin to extend with time. This time
dependent extension is called creep - and if this load application is continued for a longer duration the metal will
eventually fracture (or rupture, as it's scientifically called). This creep strength and the creep-rupture (called as stressrupture) strength are vital parameters of materials that comes into play while selecting them for applications where
prolonged physical load will be applicable at high ambient temperature.
The impact is so much, that for a normal mechanical load the deformation (creep, fracture etc ) can start at as low as
50% of the melting point of the metal contrasted with a situation, where the metal would have withstood perfectly
normally the same load at room (or lower) temperature.
And in the turbines and other hot areas of a turbojet/turbofan that is exactly what happens i.e. the combination
of the mechanical forces of a high-speed spinning turbine (and other mechanical forces as well) along-with the
thermal loads of a very high ambient temperature, makes choosing the appropriate material for such applications so
unique.
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But thats not all then theres this problem of behavior of metals to cyclic loads at elevated temperatures. Any metal
that is subjected to a certain level of cyclical loads will fail irrespective of ambient temperature, after a certain
number of cycles however, with increased temperature they will fail sooner i.e. after much lesser number of cycles.
This is schematically represented in the following diagram:
Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) is caused by loading that typically causes failure in less than 10^4 cycles and LCF can be
induced by either by pure (thus very high) mechanical loads (and of course, high temperature) or by a combination of
both moderately high mechanical loads and thermal loads (i.e. even higher temperature regime).
The type of LCF that is induced by this combination of thermal load and mechanical loads is called ThermalMechanical Fatigue (TMF) where failure occurs in a relatively low number of cycles.
In a HPT and LPT, for the highly mechanically loaded turbine disks, mechanically-induced LCF is major
concern/criteria for selection. While for the HPT (and LPT) blades where the highest temperature loads and the
slightly relatively-lower mechanical loads are applicable, TMF is a major concern. This dichotomy has a major
impact/constraint towards designing Turbine blisks etc.
High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) is associated with lower stress repeated mechanical loads leading to fatigue failure in a high
number of cycles (about 10^4 to 10^8 cycles). Normally HCF is not a problem with superalloys unless a design error
occurs and a component is subjected to a high-frequency vibration that forces rapid accumulation of fatigue cycles.
So for selecting materials for a turbofan (hot sections like turbine components and not so hot components like Fan and
Compressor components) , the following properties of material needs considering :
a) Resistance to the creep-rupture process
b) Have very good higher temperature short-time strength (yield, ultimate)
c) Have very good fatigue properties (including fatigue crack propagation resistance)
d) Exceptional oxidation resistance
In addition to these properties,
i) Related Mechanical Properties like Dynamic Modulus, Crack growth rates and Fracture Toughness
ii) Related Physical Properties like Thermal Expansion Co-efficient and Density
are also taken into consideration for selecting appropriate materials for various components of a turbofan/turbojet.
Having understood the properties that the material needs to possess to be able to be selected for turbojet/turbojet,
especially the higher temperature components like the HPT and LPTs. To that end there are two important factors
that needs considering viz.
1) Obviously higher melting points
2) Crystalline Structure which controls the toughness and ductility of the metal
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But first the Crystalline Structure factor:

For crystalline solids (like metals), the most common types of unit cells are the faced-centered cubic (FCC), the bodycentered cubic (FCC) and the hexagonal close-packed (HCP).
In FCC Crystalline structure, the bonding from the presence of outer d electrons provides from more cohesive energy
making them more tough and ductile.
Moreover, we need to understand how each of these crystalline structure influences the most important factor i.e.
resistance to creep rupture process. The reationship between the Creep Sheer Strain Rate and Normalised Activation
Energy levels and Diffusability (at melting point, is is pretty clearly depicted in the following schematic:
So its pretty clear that FCC crystalline structure with the relatively highest Normalised Activation Energy levels and
relatively lowest Diffusability (at melting point) levels is most conducive towards the creep rupture resistance
properties. So while selecting materials for turbofan components where mechanical and thermal loads are the highest
(so more prone to creep and creep-rupture), the choice would normally be with metals having a FCC crystalline
structure.
Melting Point comparison: Now lets examine the melting points of various metals wrt their atomic number.
Comparing side-by-side with the Periodic table, its pretty evident that the max melting point is achieved by the VB
and VIB column elements (refer to the peaks and near-peaks in the graph) in each of the rows and that moving down
across VB and VIB columns, the melting point increases. Plus for each of the rows, after reaching peak melting points
in VB and VIB elements, the melting points then starts falling down as we move towards the right across each of the
rows (aka towards VIIB, VIIIB etc).
Now, combining with the Crystalline structure of these metals and the fact that FCC crystalline-structured elements
are most suitable towards creep-rupture-resistance etc., its pretty clear that choice of metals would be limited to
VIIIB and the IB metals.
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But then closer inspection reveals that out of these VIIIB metals there is quite a large number of Platinum Group of
Metals (PGM) which are dense, rare and very expensive, ruling them out for large-scale usage etc.
So basically we are left with Ni, Fe and Co that are quite suitable for their usage as base material in the high
temperature components of a turbojet/fan. A superalloy's base alloying element is usually nickel, cobalt, or nickeliron and as the following illustration (of material strength vs temperature) shows, the type of superalloy you want to
use depends upon the temperature regime the corresponding turbo-machinery (made of these superalloys) are meant
to operate.
Do note however that, as we have discussed before, the superalloys are required to have the following physical
properties:
1) excellent mechanical strength and resistance to creep (tendency to slowly deform under stress) at high
temperatures
2) good surface stability;
3) corrosion resistance
4) oxidation resistance
But the problem is Ni on its pure form (melting point 1455deg C) doesnt provide any of the above properties
sufficiently enough (except maybe of corrosion resistance) to be used in turbine blades and withstand the operating
conditions (temperature reaching 1600deg C etc).
So alloys are formed by adding small quantities of various other elements so that all four of the above mentioned
properties can be met in the modern Ni based superalloys as many as 12-14 elements are added with very tight
tolerance level of quantity to be added
1) For Strength (Molybedenum, Tantalum, Tungsten, W and Rhenum)
2) Oxidation Resistance (Chromium and Aluminium)
3) Hot Corrosion Resistance (Titanium)
4) Phase Stability (by Nickel itself)
So, here are the major alloying elements that are normally added to Ni-based superalloys - and a list of representative
Ni based Superalloys (Note: the superalloys depicted below are not just some random samples being exhibited but
these details we will use in the later sections - Hint: refer to the comment column).
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Thus a superalloy, or a high-performance alloy, can be defined as an alloy that exhibits excellent mechanical strength
and creep resistance at high temperatures, good surface stability, and corrosion and oxidation resistance.
So its necessary to always keep in mind the type of temperature and pressure regime the diff parts of a turbofan are
subjected to before carefully deciding the type of superalloy material to be used there-in the following schematic
brings that out quite succinctly.
For example, the physical and thermal stresses are of completely different nature between the disk and the blades of
a turbine.
The following schematic (of a civil turbofan), though quite dated, adequately depicts the usage of various type of
Superalloys in various parts of an engine.
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So while a Titanium based alloy would be more appropriate for the LP compressor blades (temp not going beyond
700deg C), Nickel based superalloys would be more appropriate for the turbine blades (operating temp zone 12001700deg C), and also in some of the HP Compressor blades (atleast the last stages of a HPC).
And it needs to be further noted that superalloys are of various compositions and thus they exhibit various type of
mechanical and thermal stress resistance, and many of these types are relevant to a particular engine parts i.e there is
no one type of superalloy (with a specific composition) that can be bulk fitted to all parts of an engine.
BR Mainsite Crew
05 Feb 2014 10:41
As we have seen in the previous series of posts, the melting point of the base-element (in this case we are focusing
only at Ni for the time being and for Ni the pure melting point is 1455deg C) is just not enough to withstand the TeT
(operating temp zone 1200-1700deg C) of modern turbofan/jets turbine stages.
So the solution to this is developing high temperature strength of Ni by various methods and for lesser mortals
around the globe, those with no access to jiiinn-injiin tech ( grand-mullah Gas-turbini-enqyoobuddin), this is
exactly where alloys (and superalloys) come in.
We also saw in the previous posts, that apart from this high temperature creep resistance property, the other
important superalloy material-properties are fatigue life, phase stability, as well as oxidation and corrosion
resistance. These other properties like Oxidation and Corrosion resistance are provided by the formation of a
protective oxide layer which is formed when the metal is exposed to oxygen and encapsulates the material, and thus
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protecting the rest of the component. In a superalloy, oxidation or corrosion resistance is provided by alloying (or
mixing) elements such as aluminum and chromium with the base-element Ni.
But the all-important high temperature strength property, in a Superalloy is achieved somewhat thru through a
concept called solid-solution-strengthening and majorly via the formation of secondary phase precipitates such as
gamma-prime (written as ') through a phenomenon called precipitation-strengthening.
But before we do that, this important point needs to kept in mind at all times (while discussion/analyzing Superalloy
material tech) viz.
Superalloy strength properties are directly related to not only the chemistry of the alloy (i.e. base and the alloying
elements and their interplay at a crystal level) but also to a host of manufacturing or engineering processes like
melting procedures, forging and working processes, casting techniques and above-all the heat-treatment post forming,
forging and casting.
Now lets examine in some detail the two crucial high temperature strength enablers viz. Solid-solutionstrengthening and Precipitation-strengthening.
But before that we need to understand what exactly is this material strength aims to prevent i.e. what is the nature of
dislocation movement at the crystalline lattices level, that these strengthening processes are addressing. Pls refer to
the following schematic.
As its evident above, how atomic-dislocations in a crystal lattice can move easily throughout an unalloyed metal also
pls note, its easier for these dislocations to propagate in the crystalline lattices of a grain (
).
The whole effort of strengthening alloys, is to somehow prevent these dislocations to propagate as much as possible
and the next two sections deals with various alloying methods of doing so.
But before that, do note that the energy required for the dislocation movement of these atoms at the crystalline
lattice level, comes from the heat energy that is abundantly available so net-net, the whole effort is towards
increasing the heat energy availability requirement for the dislocation movement of atoms by introducing
blockers in forms of alloying atoms (in the crystalline lattice), to a level so that this can be prevented (upto a level,
of course beyond which every thing deforms, melts etc.). And that is what the temperature part of the hightemperature-strengthening of superalloys is referred to as.
Anyway, strengthening in superalloys is generally by either
1) Solid-solution hardening where-in substituted atoms interfere with deformation
Or
2) Precipitation hardening where-in precipitates interfere with deformation
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1) Solid Solution Strengthening - Solid solution hardening is simply the act of dissolving one metal into another, done
during casting, when all the metals involved are in liquid form.
Since we are talking about Nickel based superalloys here, we will about of certain other molten metals (the solute)
that can be dissolved into main metal Ni (the solvent), that will help impede the movement of dislocations, imparting
extra strength to the resultant Ni Alloy.
However, there are two types of solid solution strengthening, depending upon the atomic size of the solute wrt the
solvent (Ni, in this case).
a) Substitutional Solution Strengthening where-in the atoms of the solute material of the substitutional solution
replaces the atoms of the solvent material, Ni, in the crystal lattice. And since the solute and solvent atoms are of
different sizes, they interrupt the regularity of the crystal lattice thus preventing the dislocations from easily
propagating around this interruption.
The energy (from higher stress levels or temperature or both) required for these dislocations to move around the
substitutional atoms are significantly higher resulting higher creep resistance and general strength of the material.
b) Interstitial Solution Strengthening - The second type of solid solution strengthening is where the solute atoms are
small enough to fit into spaces (interstices) between the solvent atoms in the crystal lattice. Again here also, the
alloying element catches the dislocation and prevents it from moving further, as shown in the schematics below.
And similarly, it then requires greater stress or thermal energy for the dislocation to move around the interstitial atom
resulting in higher creep resistance and general strength of the material.
Note wrt Kaveri, usage of the UDIMET-700LI superalloy used in LPT disc - the LI stands for low Interstitial (more on
this point later).
Last edited by maitya on 06 Feb 2014 00:16, edited 1 time in total.
BRF Oldie
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05 Feb 2014 19:48
Steel and Industrial Forgings Ltd (SIFL), a Public sector firm fully owned by Govt of Kerala, is a leading
manufacturer of forging in the country since 1984. Apart from DRDO, SIFL supplies forgings to HAL,
ISRO, Railways, Defence, BEML, BHEL, L&T, and Caterpillar, etc. SIFL's product mix consists of
forgings with carbon steel, alloy steel, SS, Aluminium alloy, Super alloys, Maraging steel, Titanium alloys,
etc. SIFL has so far developed and supplied nine different types of forgings to DRDO, for their prestigious
LCA-Kaveri Engine Project.
Forgings aero engine Housing No 2 Bearing (GTM-Ti 64-Titanium Alloy 25.5 kg) Stub Shaft-II LPC (GTM-Ti 64 Titanium Alloy 37.5 kg) Shaft Stage-II LPC (GTM-Ti 64 -Titanium Alloy 46 kg) Inlet Casing (GTM-Ti 64-Titanium
Alloy 37.5 kg) Shaft II Stage Fan (GTM-Ti 64-Titanium Alloy 30 kg) Housing No 2 Bearing (GTM-SU-718-Super Alloy
43.5 kg) Housing No 5 Bearing (GTM-SU-718-Super Alloy 62.5 kg) Rear Mount (GTM-SU-718-Super Alloy 58 kg) Rear
Guide Mount (GTM-SU-718-Super Alloy 58 kg).
BRF Oldie
10 Feb 2014 14:28
Maitya ji; would like to get in touch with you offline. I yam materials science grad from the university on the banks of
the ganges, home of tulsidas, kalidas and robert pirsig. P Ramachandra Rao , P R Rao, CNR Rao, Kamanio
Chattopadhyay are all alumni.
BR Mainsite Crew
11 Feb 2014 14:55
A famous poet once said - "...
..." ityadi.
And I's caught in exact same dilemma for more than a week now, as to how to introduce in pure lay-man terms, an
otherwise bland and highly technical topic of "Precipitation Strengthening" and somehow maintain interest.
Normally, the moment turbofan/turbojet etc are uttered, one only expects to hear stuff like TeT, OPR, HPT/LPT,
Vanes, Boltzmann, Raleigh, Euler and what not. But the equally important aspect of material technology (and more
importantly, from Kaveri perspective, the Engineering Process and Tech part) is not much mentioned or totally ignored
- and even if it does get mentioned in the passing, it remains strictly confined to SCB and Blisks.
Problem is, to reach those topics and understand them with some depth, the essential-base-concept-building is
required - and the aim of these current series of 3-4 posts on pure material tech, is to somehow do that building.
So the dilemma was to either to post something like the following and be done with it:
Superalloys consist of an austenitic face-centered-cubic (fcc) crystal structure matrix phase, , plus a variety of
secondary phases from secondary precipitate phases that form in the -matrix. These along with other eta and delta
phases help ...
...
...
... that a set of superstructures {A-A2, A3B-D03, AB-B2, AB-B32, AB3-D03, and B-A2} was selected to be
representative of a series of bcc-based ordered phases. The total energies were calculated using the WIEN2k3
software package, based on the Full Potential Linearized Augmented Plane Wave (FLAPW) method within the
generalized gradient approximation (GGA).4) Muffin-tin radii of 2.0 au (0.106 nm) for Co, Ni, and Al were assumed,
and RKmax was fixed at 9.0, which almost corresponds to the 20 Ry (270 eV) cut-off energy.
Short, correct and sweet - but for most (especially those without any formal madrassa-based Material Sc/Engg degrees
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like moi), it would have passed harmlessly, without any resistance, many miles above the head.
... Or to find some less-then-accuarte-but-easier-analogy and carry on with detailed discussion/analysing in pure layman terms.
After much soul-searching (and successfully withstanding VHF nags of the SHQ, for not being attentive enough ...
...
... to daughter's impending exam-related studies
), I've decided to choose the second route.
Now as to the exact nature of dilemma on the topic on hand - is as follows:
... the actual post will be here in a day or two.
BR Mainsite Crew
14 Feb 2014 13:53
As we have seen in the previous posts creep resistance is dependent on slowing the speed of dislocation motion within
a crystal structure and the way of doing so is to introduce blockers (like those in Solid Solution Strengthening
particles, discussed above) in the form of different metallic particles that are readily soluble in the crystalline
structure. Another, special kind of blocker particles that goes a long way towards preventing these dislocations were
by introducing some "special" metallic particles or "impurities" in a carefully controlled heat-treatment conditions.
Broadly the following four characteristics of these blocker particles (from now onwards, will be referred as
precipitated particles) are required towards impeding the movement of dislocations:
a) They need to be hard (or as less deformable as possible to prevent dislocations to cut thru them) and
discontinuous i.e. to be as isolated as possible amongst themselves (but can group with the base particles)
b) Smaller and more numerous (as opposed to bigger but more widely spaced particles)
c) Be as spherical-in-shape as possible (to prevent stress build-up issues)
d) And obviously, more the merrier (but the ductility of the alloy as whole will go for a toss, if way too many nondeformable particles find its way in the lattice)
Now, taking the advantage of changes in the solid solubility with temperature phenomenon, these fine "impurity"
particles are produced by a carefully calibrated heat-treatment-over-time process, which impede the movement of
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dislocations significantly, thus increasing both the yield and creep-rupture strength of the overall alloy.
This above mentioned method of heat treatment towards increasing the yield and creep rupture strength of alloys is
called Precipitation hardening (also called age hardening).
This happens due to a phenomenon called Yield Strength Anomaly - simply put, that contrary to the common principle
of metal strength decreasing with rise in temperature, in many alloys (thus in superalloys as well), there exists a
range of temperature over which the strength of the alloy increases with increasing temperature. For some alloys
(with ordered lattice structure - more on this a little later), the range can be as large as upto 50-60% of the absolute
melting temperature. So for Ni based alloys, this range would approach roughly till 1000deg C, if proper care had been
taken with the tolerance level the temperature range, the time of exposure and precise composition of the alloying
solutes, during heat treatment.
To understand the reasoning behind this, we need to carefully look at the following binary phase-diagrams of Ni-Cr
and Ni-Al.
Pls note that in real life the precipitation hardening (and the resultant heat treatment and ageing etc) happens on a
cocktail of 6-7 or more alloying elements the Phase diagram of them, though relevant, is way too complex to be
discussed here and are thus avoided.
First of all lets study briefly the Ni-Cr Phase diagram above concentrating mostly around the red-dotted line area that
Ive drawn on it. Pls note the following observations:
1) The curved line at the top separates the liquid and solid states of the alloy so at temp 1600K, this alloy would be
in liquid form or melt. Do note here that how with decreasing concentration of Cr the melting point decreases (and
vice-versa) tending towards the melting point of Ni (approx. 1400deg C)
2) Above 80% composition of Ni in the Alloy the crystal structure obviously mimics that Ni (A1 FCC structure)
3) However, beyond 80-20% split between Ni-Cr, any further increase in Cr content, shows gradual introduction of BCC
crystal structure in the lattice. Now its a mixture of both FCC_A1 and BCC_A2 structures.
4) But the interesting bit is with increasing temperature, even with increasing concentration of Cr, more(if not all) %
of FCC structured particles are found. IOW with increasing temperature the solvent metal (Ni in this case) can absorb
much more of the solute metal (Cr, in this case) and vice-versa.
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As mentioned above, the strength and hardness of some metal alloys are enhanced by the formation of extremely
small uniformly dispersed particles of a second phase within the original phase matrix i.e. careful introduction of new
metal particles (second phase) in the continuum of the original or base metal crystal lattice. And this is accomplished
by phase transformations that are induced by appropriate heat treatments over a varying period of time. The process is
called precipitation hardening because the small particles of the new phase are termed precipitates and the term
Age hardening is also used because the strength develops with time, or as the alloy ages.
Lets consider a particular % composition of the Ni-Cr alloy say roughly about 80-20% Ni-Cr split as shown as the
vertical red line in the Phase diagram. Obviously this particular split is deliberately chosen to have a mixture of FCC
and BCC structured particles available.
Now, pls note that the Precipitation Strengthening is normally done as a two-step heat-treatment process viz.
1) Solution Heat Treatment: Now if the above alloy is heated to a temperature that lies within the A1_FCC phase
(indicated as T0 in the diagram approx. 1000deg K), the BCC phase particles will start dissolving into (or
transforming into) FCC phase. Now that elevated temperature is maintained over a period of time, all particles of 8020% Ni-Cr composition will eventually be of FCC type i.e. more atoms of solute metal (Cr) is absorbed within the
solvent metal (Ni) lattice.
Now the alloy is then cooled rapidly enough to a much lower temperature (say T1 in the diagram), which for many
alloys is room temperature, that any re-formation of BCC phase particles (via diffusion) are prevented. So now we
have a non-equilibrium super-saturated solution where-in many BCC phase atoms are present in FCC stage at temp T1
i.e. atoms of the solute metal (Cr) are trapped as a supersaturated solid solution in the solvent metal (Ni). Pls note
that the resultant alloy at this stage is soft and weak.
2) Precipitation Heat Treatment: This resultant alloy is then again heated to a higher intermediate temperature (say
T2) so that remains within the boundary of the theoretical two-phase (FCC_A1 and BCC_A2) state. This temperature
is carefully chosen so that temperature diffusion rate is high-enough to kick-start the so-far stalled process. This
diffusion will allow the formation of BCC phase particles of the Ni-Cr composition in a finely dispersed state. Then
after allowing the alloy to remain at that elevated temperature T2, for an appropriate amount of ageing time, the
alloy is then cooled down (this rate of cooling is not a factor) to room temperature (do note that for some alloys,
aging continues to occur spontaneously at room temperature over extended time periods).
Pls refer to the following schematics to understand the various limiting factors of precipitation hardening.
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The precipitation heat treatment temperature and the time (or age) is extremely crucial in determining the level of
hardening achieved. Ageing at too low a temperature T1 will mean full precipitation will not happen (particles are
too small to prevent dislocations) and the desired strength will not be achieved a phenomenon called under-aging.
But, if aging is carried out at too high a temperature T4, the precipitated particles will not be fine enough (particles
are too large and too dispersed to interact with dislocations), resulting in again sub-optimal alloy strengths.
The point that needs to be always kept in mind is that precipitation hardening is sort of a temporary phenomenon
(well, temporary but long enough for many practical applications etc.) and thus all precipitation-hardened alloys are
metastable. Attaining of an equilibrium stage is anyway going to happen sooner or later, where-in they will eventually
soften and that, this attaining of equilibrium stage happens, either by heating to high enough temperatures or
exposing them to relatively lower temperatures for long periods of time.
There's effectively a competition for the solute atoms between the metastable transition particle clusters and the
equilibrium particle clusters - and the equilibrium cluster particles will always win (so the question is, how to defer
that "wining" as much as possible and maintain the alloy strength as longer as possible).
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Apart from the process factors like heat-treatment temperature and time, the following chemical properties (or shall I
say the atomic-structure) of the metals chosen plays a crucial role in degree of strengthening achieved:
1) Degree of Mismatch of Crystal Lattice size and Crystal Structure: More match on the Crystal Lattice size and Crystal
Structure between the solute and the solvent particles, helps in several ways.
Coherency (or atomic matching) between solute and solvent particles (i.e. between the transition phase and the
matrix), helps in creating a local strain field within the matrix. It's this combination of a fine precipitate size and the
localized strain fields (due to lesser lattice mis-fitting) which impedes dislocation movement. With over-ageing (i.e
with time) the precipitate particle size gradually grows (and they also get more widely dispersed) and this local strain
field reduces becoming more and more favorable to allowing dislocation movements thru them (or bow/loop over
them).
Another way of looking at this phenomenon is via the lattice distortion that is achieved by the precipitated particles
(refer to the above schematic) - and for this lattice distortion to happen, there needs to high-degree of coherency (or
atomic matching) between the transition phase and matrix. And as long as this lattice distortion is maintained the
dislocation movements will require much higher energy to overcome it - of course this lattice distortion vanishes once
equilibrium is reached thus making it easier (read requiring much lesser energy) for the dislocation movements to pass
thru it.
However, there are exceptions to this - some precipitation-hardened nickel-base superalloys have phases (as the
ordered Ni3(Al,Ti) precipitate phase) that are extremely stable at elevated temperatures. This we will examine in
further details in the next post (a short one) dedicated towards the specific case of precipitation hardening of Ni-Al
alloys.
2) Precipitate Order: If the precipitate atoms can somehow occupy preferred positions (called ordering), the amount
of energy required by the deformation to pass thru increases. The ordered precipitates possess an extra energy due to
this preferred atom positions (compared to normal disordered or random atomic positions) called APB (antiphase
domain boundary) which the deformation force needs to overcome to pass thru.
3) Precipitate Particle Shape: The shape of the precipitate particle also plays an important role towards conferring the
required strength to the alloy. For example, in earlier version of Ni superalloys, spherical (or spheroidal) shaped
precipitate particles were found (due to 0 to +/- 0.2% mismatch solute and solvent lattices). But later with slightly
increasing mismatch of +/-0.5 to 1%, the precipitate particle shape became cube (or cuboidal). Nowadays with even
further increasing mismatch of +/- 1.25%, plate-like precipitate particles are observed.
4) Precipitate Particle Size: In addition to the normal optimum precipitate atomic size requirement (viz. too small,
deformation will slice thru; too big, deformation will bow/loop over), the property (e.g. creep and stress rupture,
tensile strength, fatigue resistance etc), of the alloy end-use may sometime dictate the number of atomic-sized
precipitates to be considered. Normally, the thumb rule is, higher ageing temperatures will produce coarse gammaprime precipitates that are desirable for creep and stress rupture applications; while lower ageing temperatures
produce finer gamma-prime precipitates desirable for applications requiring tensile strength and fatigue resistance.
For example, to defend against creep-rupture progression, single-sized precipitate particles are more desirable
(achieved in DS and SC cast alloys of turbine blades). This is accomplished by choosing single higher ageing
temperatures that will produce coarse gamma-prime precipitates that blocks creep and stress rupture propagation
more effectively (e.g. in Turbine blades).
However to defend against notch-sensitivity (in wrought superalloys, used normally in turbine disks), a two-sized
precipitate particle arrangement is more desirable this is normally achieved by a two-cycle precipitation hardening
(called Double Ageing) at two different temperatures and for the corresponding two different ageing times. So, an
initial ageing temperature of relatively higher temperature to get suitable particle coarsening to achieve moderate
amount of creep and stress rupture properties and then final lower ageing- temperature, to achieve finer
precipitate particles towards strength and fatigue resistance properties.
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Last edited by maitya on 14 Feb 2014 22:17, edited 2 times in total.
BR Mainsite Crew
14 Feb 2014 18:19
Kaveri engine blades at Defexpo-14.

Image
BR Mainsite Crew
18 Mar 2014 22:10
As we have seen in the previous few posts, the degree of superalloy precipitation strengthening is primarily due to a
combination of process factors (like heat-treatment temperature and time) and chemical properties like the atomicstructure, their orientation in the lattice etc of the metals chosen for the alloy. While these various factors have been
discussed in some detail (with the help of simpler and representative phase diagram) to bring out the basic
understanding of them, but further elaboration of the Ni-Al phases is absolutely essential to complete the superalloy
precipitation strengthening understanding. More so, since in all contemporary Ni based superalloys (like the ones used
in Kaveri) the unique intermetallic Ni3AL (and/or Ni3Ti) phase is the primary strengthening factor for conferring these
superalloys such fantastic mechanical and thermal properties.
It should be noted here also, that in real life a multitude of constituent alloying metallic elements at the atomic level
interacts (sometimes deleteriously as well) with each other to offer a resultant temperature and mechanical
strengthening properties it is beyond the scope of this post to try and examine all of these interplays and instead be
focussed on the main ones like Al3Ni phases etc.
First thing first, lets focus on the big and main aspect of precipitation strengthening in Ni based superalloys namely
the intermetallic Ni3AL phase (the Gamma-prime phase) in an Al-Ni phase diagram as depicted below.
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The schematic above is same Ni-Al phase diagram from the previous post but with quite a bit of annotations to help
point out the salient points some of which are as follows:
1) There exists a quite a narrow band (71-78%) of Ni-Al composition where-in over a major part of the solid
temperature regime an Intermetallic Ni3Al phase is found.
2) This intermetallic phase, though narrow, exists over a very large temperature range (more than 560-1300 deg C)
the implication is, once the narrow composition-range of Al-Ni in a superalloy is met, the resultant precipitation
strengthening remains available over a very large range of temperature, extending almost upto the melting point of
the superalloy.
3) The gamma matrix phase and the intermetallic gamma-prime phase both exhibit a FCC structure but are called
disordered FCC structure (in the phase diagram, this can be seen outside this intermetallic phase area, where Al% is
even lower in the composition). By contrast, a further inspection of the crystal structure of the intermetallic phase like
Ni3Al exhibits,
i) There are Al atoms at the cube corners and Ni atoms at the centres of the faces.
ii) Each Ni atom has four Al and eight Ni as nearest neighbours so, each Al atom has twelve Ni atoms as its nearest
neighbours.
This strong degree of chemical consistency is referred to as ordering where-in the Ni and Al atoms have quite
distinct positions to occupy in relative to each other. Furthermore, they exhibit the following characteristics:
a) In each unit cell, a significant degree of directional, covalent bonding exist between the number of Ni and Al atoms
in each unit cell
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b) In these crystal structures the NiAl rather than NiNi or AlAl bonds are preferred.
This ordering plays a significant role in precipitation strengthening in Ni based superalloys (i.e. increase of strength
with temperature), which is opposite/anomalous to the normal metallic behaviour like decreasing of strength with
temp increase etc. The enthalpy of formation or ordering energy with respect to the FCC phase is about 3kJ/mol and
this strengthening is due to the fact that the dislocations travelling thru the matrix gamma phase cant enter the
gamma-prime matrix phase without the formation of an anti-phase boundary (APB), and therefore another dislocation
is required for the gamma-prime phase to counter the first APB. The cutting stress required to overcome this APB is of
the order of approx. 400MPa, which is substantial.
The detail of this strengthening dynamics follows a little later in this post.
4) Beyond approx. 1300 deg C, for a given chemical composition, this intermetallic gama-prime phase starts
narrowing - aka, the fraction of gamma-prime decreases as the temperature is increased beyond ~1300deg C.
This property is used in the solution-precipitation heat treatment pairing (as discussed in the previous post) where-in
at a sufficiently high temperature (the solution treatment) the Gamma-prime particles are dissolved into Gamma
matrix particles and then aged (the precipitation treatment) at a lower temperature to produce uniform and fine
dispersion of strengthening precipitates.
5) Similarly, this Gama-prime phase extends all the way upto the liquid (aka melting) phase (marked in green),
though over even a stricter/narrower range of composition - this has a profound effect in DS and SC casting process,
which we will take up while discussing them in further detail. However it should be further noted here that its now
known that the intermetallic Ni3Al maintains the ordering upto a temperature roughly equivalent to its melting
temperature of about 1375C.
Its pertinent note here that the unit face centred cubic cell of Ni is with a lattice parameter of 0.352nm, an atomic
radius of 0.124nm and Van der Waals radius of 0.163 nm (and those for a FCC cell of Al is of lattice parameter of
0.405 nm, atomic radius of 0.118nm but the same Van der Waals radius of 0.184 nm).
The resultant intermetallic gamma-prime (Ni3Al) lattice parameter is 0.357nm.
Similar Lattice Parameter Impact: This very similar lattice parameter of the gamma-phase (0.352nm for native Ni
FCC) and the gamma-prime phase (0.357nm for Ni3Al FCC), means the intermetallic gamma-prime precipitates in a
cube-cube orientation to the matrix (the gamma-phase) aka the cell edges of their cube lattice structure are exactly
parallel to corresponding edges of the matrix/gamma phase.
Plus, since their lattice parameters are similar, for small precipitate sized particles, there is coherency (or atomic
matching) between solute and solvent particles (i.e. between the gamma-prime and the matrix phases aka Ni atoms
of a gamma-prime lattice finds an Al atom of the neighbouring gamma-prime lattice). This helps in maintaining the
interfacial energy low thus creating a local strain field within the matrix which impedes dislocation movement
between phases.
Pls note that normally a spherical particle, because of 1.24 times less area compared to a cube, is the preferred shape
for minimising the surface energy. However, with coherent phased particles, the above mentioned cube-cube
orientation results in the crystalographic planes of the cubic matrix and precipitate to remain continuous, and thus
still minimise interfacial energy.
This is the primary reason why, unlike in other metals, a precipitation hardened Ni3Al based superalloy, the tensile
strength increases with increasing temperature (upto approx. 650deg C, beyond which the available heat energy is
normally enough to allow the dislocations to shear thru the gamma-prime particles etc.).
Moreover, it should also be noted here that the intermetallic gamma-prime phase particles are themselves atomically
ordered (aka within the gamma-prime lattice itself, each Ni atom having a Al item as its neighbour etc) this again
creates a local strain field which prevents dislocations to penetrate thru them.
Plus the Ni3Al gamma-prime phase is quite ductile and thus imparts strength to the matrix without lowering the
fracture toughness of the alloy.
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This advantage however gets squandered with increasing particle size (and thus local strain field reduction) when
over-aging happens.
Pls refer to the following schematic to understand Yield stress behaviour of Superalloys with temperature and the role
that the composition, heat-treatment and volume fraction of the intermetallic Ni3Al phase plays towards it.
Ni3Al based Precipitation Strengthening and pre-heat treatment: The impact of pre-heat treatment while aging
towards conferring the precipitation strengthening properties are exhibited by the above left chart - where-in,
, which doesn't have enough volume fraction of Gamma-prime phase for precipitation
i) The graph for
strengthening, thus exhibits strength-gain purely due to solid-solution strengthening.
ii) The
, does have enough volume fraction of Gamma-prime phase for precipitation
strengthening but exhibits quite different degree of strengthening (dependent upon the fraction, size and distribution
of the Gamma-prime particles), solely due to the various temperature pre-treatment they are subjected to,
a) When
(aka very rapidly cooled) from 1000deg C, results in very very fine particle size, resulting in suboptimal strengthening (but still more than those from pure solid-solutioning)
b) When
C, the gamma-prime precipitate particles were too coarse (200-250nm) again resulting in
suboptimal low-temp (upto 650deg C) tensile strength
c) But when
, results in much finer (40-60nm) gamma-prime precipitate
particles providing the desired low-temperature tensile strength.
Also pls note the relative flat-nature of the "right-aged" (aged at 700deg C) graph which also proves the precipitationstrengthening anomaly of Ni3Al precipitation-strengthened superalloy, where-in teh alloy "holds-on" to it's tensile
strength upto a certain temperature (of approx 650deg C etc.) - by contrast, any metal woould have their tensile
strength decreased with increasing temperature (like the pure Ni tensile strength graph at the bottom of the chart).
Gamma-prime Volume fraction impact:Another factor that impacts the precipitation strengthening via the Ni3Al
gamma-prime phase, is the amount of gamma-prime in the alloy i.e., the higher the volume fraction of gammaprime, the greater is the flow stress. However this relationship is not seen in the lower temperatures where-in at
about 25% of Gamma-prime phase composition results in the peaking of the flow-stress.
The above schematic (the right chart) brings out this hardening at high-temperature dependence on volume fraction of
the Gamma-prime phase.
This phenomenon is due to the fact that, beyond 650deg C etc upon deformation, cross-slip of segments of the
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Gamma-prime phase happens between planes ({111} to {001} etc.) these slipped segments resist deformation as they
need trailing APB to overcome these cross-slipped deformations. These cross-slipped deformations are called Kear
Wilsdorf locks and further details canbe found in any Materials Science book.
So, for applications (like turbine disks) where tensile strength properties are important upto a high (but not that high
as experienced by the turbine blades) temperature, this precipitation strengthening property caused due to the finer
Ni3Al gamma-prime phase particles is utilised. The Ni3Al Gamma-prime volume-fraction becomes a key factor as the
operating temperature regime of the turbine disc ends up deciding it aka for a HPT disc application where the
operating temperature would be around 800-1000deg C, a higher volume-fraction of the Ni3Al Gamma-prime phase
would be preferred (say approx. 60-70% volume fraction as in, say Mar-M-200, a variant of which gets used in
Kaveri).
But for a LPT disc application, where-in a temp drop of approx. 300-400 deg C across the HPT stage(s), would mean
an approx. disc operating temp regime of 600-700 deg C, a lower volume fraction of the Ni3Al Gamma-prime phase
would be preferred (say approx. 20-30% volume fraction as in, say Udimet-720Li, that gets used in Kaveri LPT).
It needs to be noted here that, theoretically looking at precipitation strengthening factor alone, the tensile strength
at lower temperatures of the HPT discs would remain lower than that of LPT discs, due to the composition volume
fraction impact (refer to the schematic above). However, practically due to the usage of casting techniques like
Powder Metallurgy etc, these tensile strengths are normally enhanced to higher level.
As we have seen above, the lattice parameter of the gamma-prime phase (0.357nm for Ni3Al FCC) though very
similar, is slightly more than that of the gamma-phase (0.352nm for native Ni FCC).
But, this slight more value, also allows the misfit to be made slightly lesser than that of the matrix gamma phase, by
slightly altering the chemical composition (particularly the aluminium to titanium ratio, in the overall superalloy
mix). And this negative misfit helps formation of rafts of gamma-prime phase (actually layers of it), in a direction
normal to the applied stress. Now these precipitation rafts reduce creep rate by impeding dislocation climbs across
them.
The following schematic brings out the Creep-Rate impact due to precipitation hardening by the Ni3Al phase
(alongwith the Gamma-prime grain size influence).
So for Turbine Blade applications, most susceptible to Creep-Rupture stress, the gamma-prime phase with an
appropriate level of volume fraction and gamma-prime coarse grains plays an important strengthening role.
However do note that Cree-Rupture stress impediment is more fundamentally influenced by the casting process like
Single-Crystalline, Directional Solidification etc than that from precipitation strengthening composition etc., which we
will take in some details in subsequent posts.
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BRFite -Trainee
30 Mar 2014 10:05
Maitya: Do you have a cross-section for the Kaveri engine ?
BRF Oldie
21 Jun 2014 06:12
Very interesting article by one of my favorite out-of-box thinkers in the latest issue of "Vayu" - Prof Prodyut Das about
Kaveri.
Need to scan or obtain the article for all to read.
He says
1. India did not have the essential test rigs for engine development and still does not have them. Even Egypt in 1964
had a modified An 12 as flying test bed.
2. We shoud stop worrying about Blisk/single crystal etc and look at little details like improving airflow around
individual blades etc.
I have not yet re read the article in detail - will post later. Maybe will post scans.
Overall he praises Kaveri if it has reached 90% of its thrust and suggests the ways forward
Added later - here is the article on Prof Das' blog
http://profprodyutdas.blogspot.in/
The Kaveri Turbofan Project- an open source assessment
If reports that the Kaveri has reached 90% of its Full Military power are true it represents a considerable
achievement for the Engineers concerned. It also indicates no foreign collaboration is required to complete this
project. The above numerator is unfortunately tarnished by the denominator of several decades of development
with no engine flight cleared and a realistic date of completion is uncertain. Jet Engines development presupposes
certain facilities as sine quo non: a) Test rigs for combustion chamber development b) Test rigs for testing the
compressor spools together at rated conditions, c) test rigs for testing the turbine blading for cooling, thermal and
mechanical loads simultaneously and finally d) a flight test bed to test the engine in the air. Item d) is still not
available in the country and there are reasons to believe that items a), b, c) were not available at the time of
taking up the project and may not in fact be satisfactorily available even now. Recall that Egypt, developing the
E300 engine under the guidance of Ferdinand Brandner, with much poorer traditions and resources, had a flying
test bed , a modified AN12, in 1964,.
The lack of these basic test rigs and their exploitation would have had a significant effect on the programme. The
present problems with the engine lack of performance, unreliability and overweight can be traced directly to
the lack of the above test rigs and indicates a lack of top leadership at the front line of problems. It was
disconnected thinking, in 1987, to so confidently say that our engine would be flat rated. The basic tools
needed for the job was nowhere there. The relatively low total running hours (< 2000hrs for the entire programme
spread over about ten engines) would mean that the infantile measles and mumps kind of problems have not yet
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been exposed. If the engine hours are correct, it was surely premature to have air tested the engine in 2003 when
it, quite expectedly, failed. A part of the learning process is not an adequate explanation for this kind of
repeated self induced failure. The failure delayed the project and should not have been done at that point of
time. I recall a former Director, in discussing the Kaveri pressure ratio, admitting privately Yes. We did over
reach ourselves. He was being modest! The fault, dear Brutus, is in our stars! Pratt & Whitney (P&W) was not
allowed to do Jet Engine work because of the War. GE was clearly ahead. Immediately after, in 1945 itself, P&W
set up a Turbine Laboratory (WTL). Note that they named this critical survival asset after their Chief Engineer
Andrew Wilgoos and not after Rentschler, their Founder & Chairman!) WTL was fully integrated into P&Ws mission
to be a prime player rivaling GE and had the skill and resources of P&W on tap. We set up GTRE but it was a
completely different entity vis a vis HAL in terms of aims, service conditions and critical performance parameters.
Yet GTRE was supposed to depend on HAL. We do things right but dont or cannot do the right things! Even given
the best of intentions results would be what they are.
The Good news is that an engine that is giving 90% of its cold thrust cannot be all that bad. The engineers who can
achieve that also cannot be bad. What has been lacking has been the leadership over several generations of
higher management. We will come to this point later. The Kaveri does not want more technology. It needs more
care and analysis. Jet engines, though inherently simple, are extremely sensitive to detail as the following
examples will illustrate. Point one millimetre (four thou if you are that old!) is the general unspecified
tolerance in aerospace machinery. It is the average thickness of human hair. If the gap between the rotating blades
and the casing varies by this point one millimeter in a Kaveri sized engine it means a difference in the turbine
tip/casing flow area of about the size of a 20mm hole. Imagine the differences in flows if you are dealing with
pressures of around 20 bars! If the clearance is that amount too little, you will soon get very expensive sounds,
blades being shed and possibly an engine fire. The tip clearance is a decider for TBOs. The current technique is to
remotely sense the tip clearance and heat or cool the casing locally to keep the clearance constant. No wonder the
grudgingly respected Chinese engineers still manage to stir fry their new engines with some regularity! The same
thickness or (thinness, if you will!) in the engine casing will vary the weight of the engine by approximately 5-8
kg and an increase or decrease in engine length by about ten millimeter will affect engine weight by about 4 to 5
kgs due to casing and shaft weights. Of course a 0.1 mm variation in blade profile is unthinkable. I cite these
figures to show the gearing between cause and effect in Jet engine development and the need to go over
details, components and results with a fine comb -and an engineering Sherlock Holmes by your side!
However creditable the performance of the troops the present situation reflects on the higher direction of the
programme. There are two management issues involved. The first was to undertake the project without having the
physical resources ready. Everything is always wanted yesterday. It appears the then leaders, (assuming they knew
clearly what was involved) either wanted to make someone happy or wanted the project at any cost. Honesty
about the situation-so disdained by the clever- is an essential requirement and a mark of leadership. In 1962 Lt.
Gen Kaul, by acceding to political pressure gave us the Himalayan Blunder .Nine years later Sam Manekshaw by
stubbornly (but charmingly!) refusing to move until he was ready, delivered Bangladesh! The second area of failure
of Leadership was a failure of knowledge. There was a lack perhaps of a holistic view of what the engine was
supposed to do. They apparently wanted an engine just like the F404 rather than thinking more systemically
about an adequate engine which would do the job. By these two fatal lacunae-one physical and the other mentalGTRE fell into mission impossible mode.
Rebooting our mindset
Let us look at the above in a bit more detail. Modern Western Military engines are, perhaps surprisingly, strongly
injected with technologies developed for competing in the civilian markets. It makes sense for the West to use
these thoroughly proven technologies in their military programmes- it helps to amortize costs! An opposite
corollary was the USSR where Technology Development was always led by Military requirements and USSR civil
engines were the dregs in terms of Sfc and TBO! For a civilian engine a TBO of 4000 hrs is essential. The plane
flies fourteen hours per day. One cannot yank the engine off the pylon every 6 weeks as a R29B style of 550 hour
TBO would entail. Every gram of fuel saved per hour is of consequence given the huge number of hours flown per
year. This entails engines having compression ratio s of 20:1 to 30:1 with current research exploring 70:1. (Want to
play catch up with the Technology, any one!) One could go on but the drift is that before we follow someones
lead we have to stop and think of our task and the cloth we have for our coat. What are these?
a) Slash the engine to begin with TBO to around 400-500 hours .Insist the Air Force declare what is their attrition
rate for single engine close support fighters. I know we lost about 30 Hunters out of 96 active in the six squadrons
in the nine years between inductions to just before the 65 war. Very few if any of these could have approached
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1000 hours. It would be interesting to have a histogram of the number of engine hours of all the MiG 21s at the
time of their write off. If this figure is pretty low as I suspect it to be, there is no need to make a 2000 TBO or
4000hr technical life an immediate target. A 250 hrs TB0 (Incoming! Incoming! Duck! Duck!) would last a couple of
years on a fighter airframe. Reduction of TBO time will significantly reduce the development task without
affecting the operational efficiency. The problem of low TBO-replacing engines- can be ameliorated by designing
for easy installation and removal. In the Mig 15 two men could do it in one hour! Engines are more plumbed
nowadays but that is where the challenge of good engineering comes in! Incidentally, an Indian Engine built with
Indian materials in Indian factories would be formidably competitive against all comers even with these low TBOs
and TTLs.
b) Do we really need 20:1 CRs (compression ratio) given the engine becomes heavier and more surge prone as we
jack up the CR? Higher CRs mean more stages and the compressor and combustor casings being open ended pressure
vessels, mostly in heavy alloys add much to the weight. Remember that a 0.1 mm thicker casing will add 8 kg to the
weight! We know the benefits of high compression ratios are subjected to diminishing returns. The Orpheus with a
CR of 6:1had a sfc 1.03, the R 25 had a CR of 12:1 and had a sfc of 0.9 and an engine with 20:1 CR will have an sfc of
around 0.8. This high compression ratio led improvement in sfc does not pay in our typical low duration sorties.
For an IAF standard fighter sortie the weight of engine plus fuel required (for the same level of technology in
other areas) disfavours the high compression engine. Also because the compressor passage areas are fixed, the
resistance to compressor flows at part throttle (where the wretched engine will be spending most of its life,
anyway!) the proneness to surging will cause problems. Finally to remember is that high CRs in themselves are a
partial contributor to the sfc figures. Burners, combustor and turbine blade technology being the others.
c) Are we worrying too much about smoke and NOx? Western standards are again derived from already existing
and already proven and available low risk Civilian technology which we do not have. A short combustor means a
lighter engine because the shaft and casing becomes shorter. Shorter combustors will require focused research on
getting the spray pattern tighter in the spread of droplet size. How much work has been done in this area before
we set our targets?
d) Western aircraft design philosophy believes that VG intakes dont make sense below M1.3. Our designers follow
the same track. This, I believe, is a frozen thought from the 60s and the days of electromechanical sensors and
actuators. Given developments in sensor technology and computer controls we should look at new variable
geometry intake configurations to maximize pressure recovery. Even if we can save the equivalent of one or two
stages on the compressor it would help in reducing the length of compressor, ergo a lighter engine.
e) Also to be examined is the total thrust /fuel flow requirement profile and optimize the engines weight and
fuel consumption in relation to the task. A typical LCA type engine will have the following profile. A/B thrust
approx 22-3 minutes, Full military 6 minutes, 60% thrust 20 minutes, 45% thrust 25 minutes, and flight idle about 5
minutes. The figures are illustrative but the idea that we must reduce the Total fuel burn/sortie rather than
optimize for a rarely used best figure. The intake, the engine and the afterburner together have to be seen as a
system which will give optimum performance in the 0.6-o.8M at low level with all other conditions being seen as
special cases for the system.
f) A consequent question to the point made above is given that relatively small duration of operation of the max.
Installed thrust how much of the thrust should come from the engine and how much from the A/B? The
Tyumanskii/Gavrilov R 25 of the MiG 21bis is an example of alternative thinking. The dry thrust is 59kN, with A/b it
is 69kN but with a boosted a/b it gives 97kN (from Russian sources!) which thrust wise would be ample even for
the LCA! The use of the boosted A/b reduced engine life at the rate of one hour per three minutes but it works!
Anyway as said before a totally Indian engine will be cheaper.
There are several more such issues but the point I am trying to make is that we have to see the task not as an
engine just like something else, as I suspect, had been done. Let us move from mere Information to Knowledge
and, hopefully, from Knowledge to Wisdom! GTRE hamstrung itself by trying a drop fit replacement for the F404.
The saner approach would have been to have a dialogue with ADA so that ADA would be prepared to rebore (Not,
please, literally as one irate reader seemed to think!) the LCA airframe to accept the slightly different engine. We
must therefore come to a state of mind where we read the book and then throw it away to chart our own course.
So what needs to be done?
If you have ten hours to chop a tree
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Spend nine sharpening your axe! Build up and sophisticate our test rigs so that the key problems can be solved in
detail. For example the test rig for the turbine blade should not only be able to handle a mass flow of around
5kg/sec @ 1400 C- for a cascade of four or five blades but also will be able to simulate the creep loads on the
blade whilst a separate air source will supply cooling air through the internal passages. Similarly for the
compressor test rigs it is necessary to have rigs powerful enough to test the two spools together irrespective of
what may be the practice in other countries. A short combustion chamber will need research on droplet
uniformity, spray pattern, burner types and configurations. Turbulence and uniformity of temperature at Turbine
entry are other areas to study. The test rigs help to break down the problem before synthesizing the solution.
These test rigs are the axes for the problem and in future we must emphasize test rigs and their roles in any
project. Normally the evolution, design, fabrication, and operation of productive test rigs will require the same
quality of ingenuity and good engineering as the engine itself.
The obvious thing to do-dont!
Perhaps there is a need to review the Jet engine programme as a National programme rather than a DRDO baby.
No single organization can do the job alone. In England Bristol Engines starting Jet development from scratch but
let Lucas focus on the critical fuel systems and combustion. Team work has to be enforced by getting GTRE back to
what it really was set up to do and HAL has to be forced to pick up GTREs baby and bring it up to some state of
civil behaviour. It is possible that a team of HAL s best designers and fitters from Koraput and Engine Division are
transferred to lead the Kaveri programme. Unfortunately, whilst administratively such action is possible it wont
work in peacetime. Internal priorities would change; the organizations concerned would become creative. We
would see tribal warfare the Pathans would relish! As things stand GTRE must find a way out from the difficulties it
has created for itself!
What ails thee Knight?
Over the decades our betters have replaced in our Engineering colleges practice based engineering with science
based engineering-even at the undergraduate level! Consequently GTRE, as with other scientific research
establishments in India, has unquestioningly adopted the rather large assumption that possession of an engineering
degree confers the abilities of an engineer to the holder. The natural consequence of this assumption is that the
more the degree the more the qualification of the person to take engineering decisions -never mind that one of
the most esteemed and successful engineering leaders in the country, who has unfailingly delivered, Mr. E
Sreedharan of Pamban Bridge, Delhi Metro et al ( the list be long!) is a mere B.E. The reality is that Engineering
is a practioners art and the qualification- irrespective of its degree -is merely a license to enter the area.
Possibly, as in education, in selecting leaders, possessions of qualifications have outweighed other parameters.
The result is a lack of engineering leaders who enjoy being at the front. I could cite several examples (looking
back, quite amusing!) of the effect of lack senior engineering leadership at the frontline .That will have to
wait. However I will give an unrelated example. Rommel won his battles often with inferior forces, because he
had much more direct knowledge of the tactical situation real time and was personally judging the situation with
his great experience and technical skills-apparently he was an IC engine nut-rather than relying on what some
inexperienced Feldwebel thought of the situation. This undistorted, experienced, assessment of realties came
from being right at the front when his opponents were at their HQ way back from the action. How many Top
Scientist work side by side with the fitters? The administrative problem is that passionate engineers often tend to
be enfants terrible of the organization and are often ACRd ( quite validly, depending on your priorities!) Not
quite mature or good but simple minded! The net result of all this is that GTRE probably has excellent
administrators- and they are also needed -but it does not have excellent practical engineers who can calmly think
things through and yet have the authority to get thing s done.
There be hope yet
Despite the clouds above the situation is ripe for rapid rectification which should enable us to have- without
foreign collaboration- a flight cleared engine within a predictable and short time scale Foreign collaboration, if
available, may not hurt but I believe the here the demand for collaboration is a bureaucratic failsafe decision;
no one can be blamed. It is this lack of the right stuff people who will work on the engine rather than eat their
dinner-which is why we are where we are at present. Instead of commercial collaboration what we can do is
however is to get retired engine designers over as a Teacher or a guide. The Chinese not only regularly had Hooker
over as an honoured Guest they also had Ferdinand Brandner over as a Professor in their top University. I dont
think Brandner simply taught the prescribed course! The other reason for rejecting foreign collaboration for the
Kaveri is the nature of the present need. The answer to the Kaveris performance problems cannot be yet more
technology-there is no magic in Technology- but more care and thought and listening to what the engine is trying
to tell us- yes it talks! Assuming the basic design (barring, apparently the A/B) was sound, what is needed is a
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hundred small improvements - improving the surface finish of the compressor casing bore or the blades, working
on cleaning up flows near the roots, stressing the components down to closer margins, tightening technology
processes and so on rather than introducing blisks or shrouded blading or SCBs which everyone seems to talk
about. We put in certain Technology. It was put in to do a job. Why is it not then doing it? It is here that GTRE is,
by its charter, subtly handicapped. Being a R&D set up it does not have those seasoned practiced people whose
hands can read the engine even with their eyes closed. A R&D organization, anywhere on the Globe will not have
the skills common in a production unit.
Cutting your coat
We need to:
i) Enter into a dialogue with the customer about TBO, engine change procedures, TTL et al.
ii) Back off from trying to build something same as the GE F XYZ. It is not necessary or even the best solution.
The Airframe boys should be ready to rebore their fuselage. Everyone does it all the time.
iii) Flog the engines on the test beds even if they are developing no more thrust than kerosene stove. If 550 hrs
TBO is technical target one would expect 5500 hours on a batch of ten engines anyway. That way at least the
infantile mechanical problems are exposed and can be corrected.
iv) Prioritize the acquisition of more than one flying test bed. Do you know Harry Follands last design was a large
test bed to test the 2000 hp class Bristol engines that were supposed to be coming up in the 40s. A large simple
multi engine aircraft an enlarged Canberra using the AL31 would be a lovely project for people building.
If we were to do it again
In future the task has to be bifurcated with GTRE contributing by providing experimental data and HAL Engine plant
doing all the nitty gritty mechanical detail design stuff in which HAL is arguably, by far and away is better placed
to do. Let me illustrate by one example: The Kaveri accessories drives gear box. HAL Helicopter Division has years
of experience designing and making lightweight gear boxes for helicopters. For reasons possibly of unease with
HAL, ADA gave the contract to CVRDE, a sister organization but with no aerospace collaboration and no direct
access to the technology. My bet is that HAL Helicopter Division would have given a better gearbox in shorter time
simply because the HALs supply chains of know how, information, machinery and process technology and human
resources were shorter than CVRDE. With every license manufacture agreement comes a wealth of informationmaterials, processes, heat treatments, machining methods, testing methods and parameters, even how and where
to mark the part no and how to store the part. Over the years, at HAL this know how has been subconsciously
processed into Know why. To CVRDE it would be new territory. The difference may or may not have been much but
look after the days and the years will look after themselves. This is why RAE and its cousins at AMES or
Zhukovsky do not design engines and aircraft.
What are the areas on which DRDO/GTRE is particularly well equipped to focus on and what will be necessary for
us to develop for a future Indian Engine programme?
1) Carbon fibre fan casings: TETs, engine efficiencies and thrust are in symbiosis. Given modern TETs a pure jet is
no longer efficient and some degree of bypass is inescapable. The fan shroud operating at relatively low pressures
and temperatures is an ideal case for (carbon) composites. DRDOs appropriate unit should develop expertise on
fabricating and proving fan shrouds of approximate 900mm dia. and capable of handling pressures of 2-5 bars.
2) Short Length combustors: Excellence in combustion is a key to fuel efficiencies and light weights. GTRE must
focus on a target of the shortest combustor length. Dual spray nozzles optimized for cruise and max thrust as used
in modern civilian engines may be explored if found imperative.
3) Compressor Aerofoils: The R11 achieved a 9:1 compression ratio using just six stages with consequent savings in
weight. Could this be the starting block for a new development programme aimed at high pr. rise per stage with
stable operations?
4) Carbon fibre fans capable of sustaining bird hits.
5) Turbine cooling technology: GTRE must further improve its capability to simulate actual working conditions
faced by turbine blades.
6) Production technology for precision cast ready to use turbine blades.
7) Expansible thermal coatings to minimize heat losses through compressor casings.
Technology for milling combustor surfaces to very close limits.
9) Fan gearing systems. The future engines will all be geared so that the fan drive turbine can run at its happiest
speed. This will give us useful freedom in fan design.
10) Blisks. The Centrifugal Compressors, carved from an aluminum cheese, was an early form of Blisk. If HAL has
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the Goblin compressors process sheets these could be the starting point for our Blisk programme. Why not give
HAL the contract?
It is tempting to suggest that the actual bench testing should be done by a different and independent group.
Honda used to test all their engines at a different and independent test site. This is merely good Industrial
practice and should be worth replicating here.
The flying test bed is of course an imperative. Outsourcing this function is simply not on. Apart from the
problem of logistics there is also the subtle question of security of the engine itself when abroad. Countries adopt
or build their own special aircraft for acting as a flying test bed. It is just a pipedream that if a few airworthy
C119G airframes were available today one could toy with the idea of an interim test bed for the Kaveri! The old
thing was configurationally ideal for a test bed. Of course an enlarged Canberra (ref The Haft of the Spear
Vayu) would be another option. These would be simple aeroplanes capable of being designed, built and maintained
by simple people and would need a simple budget!
With such a list of activities to do GTRE would be busy and happy. I am reminded of the fact that TsAGI
discovered that the tailed delta configuration was the best layout for the supersonic combat role and such was
the quality and reliability of its findings that both Mikoyan and Sukhoi OKBs were not too proud to rely on Ts AGI
data for the MiG 21 and Su9 aircraft plan forms. Perhaps the proud traditions of high quality fundamental research
continue till today; the similarity of aerodynamic layout of the Su 27 and the MiG 29 is no coincidence.
Give unto Caesar.
We must give unto HAL that the logical house for development of actual engines is HAL Engine Division. The reason
is that they are organized, experienced and their supply chains are shorter. What then will they do? For my money
they should engage in the development of three core engines using not tomorrows technology, not todays
technology but yesterdays technology. By yesterdays technology I mean technology that has been in production at
HAL BLR or KPT for the last five years at least and we are all exposed to it thoroughly. The three cores will be of
sizes 10kN, 25 kN and 60kN. They should all be single shaft turbojets and the stress will be on timeliness,
reliability and technology security above all the other necessary aims. It is a sedulous myth that advanced features
teach. If advanced features are a cause of such delay as enabling the proposer (s) to retire without delivering,
then advanced features is de facto an accessory to a swindle. Maximum stress will be put on using Midhani
materials. The Orpheus, the work of a Master, has a few interesting features which could be replicated. The shaft
is a thin walled large diameter tube; it easily permits the insertion of the second spools shaft as was done in the
case of the Pegasus which gave three times the thrust even in its earliest version (despite VTOL configuration!).
We can expect more. The second Orpheus feature I find desirable is that it has a limited number of stages (7+1) on
a short shaft and so can use just two bearings thus avoiding the third bearing and jointed shaft with its attendant
proneness to whirling vibrations and ,who knows, blade shedding. In fact starting point for the 25 kN could well be
the Orpheus since large quantities of partly used engines must be with ED Sulur (?) following the retirement of the
Kiran! The purpose of these core engines is they will over time form a family of fan and leaky engines for a
variety of military and civil applications ranging from 10kN to 250 kN. They will incorporate the certificated
advanced technology GTRE will no doubt develop. In fact GTREs contribution will be essential to the success of
the programme. A side effect of the development of these small cores is that any of the Embraers can be rigged
up as a 3 engine flying test bed either DC10 or Lockheed Tri star style or even in place of the AEW pack and the
tail arrangement changed to a twin fin arrangement-good project with a bite for our young engineers in
collaboration with Embraer.
In a lighter vein, GTRE should quietly examine its press statements carefully before clutching in the tongue.
Talks about Marine Kaveri are allowable but to talk of a Kaveri powered locomotive is to betray Ivory Tower
disconnection. Not only will the engine choke in the Indian dust but also the power would be so enormous the
train length would exceed the loop line (siding!) length used by the Railways. Marine and Power versions are
completely different animals using different materials and operating in different ambient conditions. These
derivatives will in no way help the Aircraft Engine programme and recalls Northkote Parkinsonss story about how a
big Government funded project to make a hyper rocket fuel failed miserably but said the Chief of the project at a
press conference I am afraid we have failed to have a useful rocket fuel but fortunately we find it is an excellent
paint remover! The UACV Kaveri idea is much better and on the right track.
Nil desperandum!
The Kaveri is in no way worse off than the LCA programme. What is needed, as with the LCA, is not more
technology but more care and attention to detail. That will transform both projects if not into outstanding stupor
mundi (wonder of the world) products as so tiresomely claimed but at least in to serviceable and affordable
equipment. I take this opportunity to thank Shri Ashok Baweja, (Chairman HAL2004-2009) for suggesting during a
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casual conversation why I did not do a piece on the Kaveri. This piece had its genesis in his suggestion and is by
way of thanks for the same.
BRF Oldie
14 Jul 2014 19:01
these are cnot "engines for Russian Warships", hain? Aren't these axial turbofans with small intake diameter, and
actuators on the nozzles for thrust-vectoring?
Last edited by Indranil on 16 Jul 2014 00:08, edited 1 time in total.
BRFite
31 Jul 2014 17:45
Titanium for Kaveri

I've been reading some articles about the use of titanium of help cut the weight of jet engines. The mass of Kaveri is a
weighty issue, and the primary reason that it doesn't meet the IAF requirements.
Titanium offers a way to cut the weight of an engine, and substitute the use of nickel alloys. Bharat does have strong
expertise in Titanium and its alloys, while there is no domestic source of nickel. There are also no experts in creating
nickel alloys locally either, while the Kaveri already consists of 20% titanium alloys.
Increasing that % to 33, matching the amount used in other engines would make the Kaveri project a success. The
expertise in working with Titanium from sponge form has been developed by ISRO and Madhani, so the expertise is
available locally. ISRO has launched spacecraft and satellites, so experience in working with titanium alloys is
available locally.
Real World Experience with Titanium alloys in turbines
Both GE and Snecma have built engines with extensive of titanium, in production.
GE
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... se-207148/
GEnx, breakthrough lies in its use of an intermetallic compound called titanium aluminide (TiAl) in the LPT blades.
After 20-30 years of research it is a key breakthrough to use this material in this way, says GE Aircraft Engines
materials and process engineering general manager Robert Schafrik. The TiAl is being used in the sixth and seventh
stages of the LPT, after proving its robustness on more than 1,500 cycles in a CF6. For us to step up and bet the
engine on this technology is a big deal, says Schafrik, who adds: If it has only
youve got to believe this is here to stay.
SNECMA
http://www.snecma.com/snecma-safran-and ... ml?lang=en
Titanium Alloys for Turbines
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Titanium aluminide (TiAl), an alloy of titanium and aluminum, is a new-generation material with outstanding
compared with the
qualities. Standing up to very high temperatures (750C), it will
nickel-based alloys traditionally used in low-pressure turbines. As part of the new LEAP engine, this alloy will be used
for the first time in the world on a single-aisle commercial jet. It will contribute to the excellent performance of this
new engine, which offers 15% lower fuel consumption than the best engines now in service.
http://www.tital.de/it/news/attualit/hi ... inide.html
Blades made of titanium aluminide offer an enormous technical potential. Showing high resistance to high
temperature,
, a value which is 250C greater than values currently
these components can withstand temperatures of up to
achievable with other materials. A further plus is that these blades, with a density of 4 g/ cm, provide a weightsaving
of around 10 % over currently available titanium alloys blades. At the same time, the new titanium aluminide blades
are
as comparable blades made of special steel alloys. The bottom line is that the new titanium
only
aluminide blades enable savings in weight and fuel consumption, thus achieving major reductions in CO2 emissions.
http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design- ... ing/47894/
TiAl has a density of 50% compared to current alloys, but it is rarely used in engines due to being very difficult and
expensive to cast. Avio, however, has shown that blades of different configurations and sizes can be manufactured in
TiAl
by using EBM.
Manufacturing method
EBM is a type of additive manufacturing for metal parts. It is often classified as a rapid manufacturing method. The
technology manufactures parts by melting metal powder layer by layer with an electron beam in a high vacuum.
Unlike some metal sintering techniques, the parts are fully dense, void-free, and extremely strong.
This solid freeform fabrication method produces fully dense metal parts directly from metal powder with
characteristics of
the target material. The EBM machine reads data from a 3D CAD model and lays down successive layers of powdered
material.
These layers are melted together utilizing a computer controlled electron beam. In this way it builds up the parts. The
process takes place under vacuum, which makes it suited to manufacture parts in reactive materials with a high
affinity
for oxygen, e.g. titanium.
Unfortunatley, EBM is not a technology available locally, so the machines to do it will have to be imported or
developed.
Example of Titanium blade
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects ... -4003.aspx
Titanium alloys and ISRO
http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 8-3#page-1
In conclusion, titanium alloys are an exciting development. Up till now GTRE has been working on a technology that is
already obsolete, with SNECMA and GE already working on titanium aluminium alloys to replace nickel alloys. So even
if GTRE is 100% successful with their development effort, they will have created something that is already obsolete.
More imports! The IAF will cry out. The only way to head them off is to develop a titanium engine instead. And the
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expertise and skills to do it is available locally. Titanium is preferable to nickel, not merely for better performance,
but also because more local expertise is available.
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Project BRF - India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

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Project BRF - India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

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1/11/2016

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga

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17 Jan 2014 21:47

Last edited by Rahul M on 11 Feb 2014 16:25, edited 3 times in total.

17 Jan 2014 23:02

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Based on the above proposal, Government

17 Jan 2014 23:14

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

17 Jan 2014 23:28

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

17 Jan 2014 23:31

2) Similarly, on the materials front,

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

But there-in lies the problem,

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Last edited by maitya on 17 Jan 2014 23:42, edited 1 time in total.

18 Jan 2014 00:09

3. Pressure ratio - 21.5 overall.

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

10. OK, some nos....

From the hindu

but what the IAF and

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

^^^ It was a known fact from 2008.

: We have a functional engine, but there is a slight shortfall in performance.

Also, we still have to perform long- endurance tests of the engine to

18 Jan 2014 00:52

Length: 137.4 in (3490 mm)

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

- LP compressor with 3 fan stages and transonic blading

But that's hardly the point.

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

18 Jan 2014 01:19

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

18 Jan 2014 01:23

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

18 Jan 2014 05:52

Theres absolutely no other way.

18 Jan 2014 13:25

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

:: Kaveri's Compressor Blades + The Indian Single Crystal Effort

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Thank you maitya saar. One more question ... ?

PS: Some Pir-review will be extremely welcome.

Note: Here-in Id like to also mention that the,

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Last edited by maitya on 19 Jan 2014 09:38, edited 3 times in total.

18 Jan 2014 13:26

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Now where do we stand as far as the DS and SCB technology is concerned:

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

Next will be another lay-man's attempt

to look at OPR shortfall impact on Kaveri.

Project BRF: India's Kaveri Engine Saga - Bharat Rakshak

18 Jan 2014 15:14