Kaveri engine for LCA to be ready in 2002

BANGALORE, FEB 4: The Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE)-developed Kaveri engine will be tested on India's indigenously built Light...

BANGALORE, FEB 4: The Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE)-developed Kaveri engine will be tested on India’s indigenously built Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) in the third quarter of 2002, and the marine version of the same engine will be ready by 2003, according to top GTRE sources.

The high altitude-testing of Kaveri engine would start by the end of this year, while the engine would be tested on a TU-16 aircraft from a Russian facility early in 2002 before power testing it in-flight on the LCA.

The GTRE is developing two Kaveri engines for marine applications – one for the LCA’s naval fighter aircraft and the other as power plants on the frigates of the Indian Navy — which would be operational after testing them on free power turbines at the GTRE facility here itself.

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The Kaveri project was sanctioned in 1989 with an outlay of Rs 450 crore with a probable completion period of 93 months, the sources said.

Referring to the delay in the completion of the work, the sources said a date which was optimistic and realistic had to be proposed as a “realistic, but a long cycle time would not have got the project sanctioned immediately then.”

The present schedule of readying the Kaveri engine by July-September, 2002, for the LCA was actually well within the stipulated time as a former GTRE director Dr Rangachari Krishnan, had pointed out that the normal gestation period for an engine of this nature from conceptualisation to its final operational capacity was 15 years.

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