A modern turbofan engine that could power a fgfa like amca should feature the latest genre technologies including single piece bladed compressor disks, single crystal high pressure turbine blades, powder metallurgy disks, ceramic coating and composite materials. This implies that the Kaveri turbofan should be upgraded to generate 110-kN wet and 75-kN dry thrust. But then an engine of this capability will need to incorporate single crystal blade technology, integrated rotor disk and blades and super alloys of nickel and cobalt. Kaveri engine in its present form uses directionally solidified blade technology which is rather an old technology.
Not long back, Snecma offers for co-developing Kaveri engine was called off after it came to the conclusion that Snecma instead of agreeing to transfer latest genre engine technology to India had just offered the replacement of Kaveri’s Kabini core with Snecma Eco Core which was not acceptable to India as India was keen on mastering the latest genre engine technologies. Moreover, the French was trying for a backdoor entry to tejas program or lucrative indian engine market. The problem with kaveri is in its weight to thrust ratio not its core but material used. Now it is hopeful of upgrading the Kaveri engine to meet the needs of AMCA in the context of the vastly improved industrial support base in the country that the aero engine development programme had helped create. The biggest challenge ahead would be how to enhance the power of Kaveri without increasing its size and weight and through incorporating the single crystal turbine blade technology. But the reality is that GTRE is now nowhere close to developing single crystal blade technology though dmrl has announce some break through in this regard. However efforts are now on to sharpen the expertise level in the country for developing the high performance nickel and cobalt super alloys for Kaveri.
In order to give quickening impetus to the development of Kaveri engine, DRDO should look at setting up a high altitude test facility in the country. This would help obviate the dependence on the Russian facility for carrying out the high altitude tests of the engine in Russia. As it is, ISRO was able to successfully qualify the home grown cryogenic engine constituting the upper stage of the GSLV after a high altitude test facility was set up at Mahendragiri complex near to Kanyakumari.
Thus, foremost of India’s mission should be to develop the indigenous Kaveri engine with the thrust to weight ratio sufficient enough to propel Tejas or amca.