Messiach & the Pakistan's Urgent Need for A Turbine Engine

[SQ8]

@JamD @denel @Cookie Monster @Oscar @ AllOthers

Pak is a different place now from what it was when i left in 2000 for China. My last visit recently has been heart breaking. Poverty has monstrously expanded with erosion of middle-class. I came from that particular class but now it has totally descended into poverty. I was astounded to see the stark difference between the rich & poor which exists today. This is phenomenal. I was lucky, I escaped in time. My very first post was developing & maintenance engineer looking after humidifiers etc at an industrial weaving plant near gujranwala & there were many such plants back then. Today it was heart-breaking to see most of them closed or near closure. Pakistans industrial backbone is collapsing & all that rot started from bhuttos era but the last 30 yrs & especially the last 17y of musharraf & two democracies have been fatally disastrous.

There is a near desperate need to re-develop Pakistans core industrial infrastructure when >60% populace is living without electricity. You are most welcome. Its a different world, a very challenging one, full of hopes and disappointments but worth living for.

Unfortunately the problem with the perception Pakistanis have is that increasing consumerism is somehow an indicator of better times. Severe urbanization has left us unaware of the actual degradation in rural areas and the high rise apartment rat mazes leave little clues to the financial situation that is in those areas.
Software startups have helped but as such they remain software based and there is little or no manufacturing progress.

 

[messiach]

Middle class is eliminated. Its just rich and poor. I have been left devastated by the state of engineering infrastructure. People here want to know about AeSp future & FC-1/FGF and i do'nt want to let them know their national industrial infrastructure & electricity generation programmes are on their ankles.

I am retiring. There were offers but i intend to offer off&on consultancy only....I have decided to team up with old colleagues & meet the likely who-so-ever Mr X,Y,K comes into prime-ministerial office to put up a high priority mid to longterm plan for pakistan post-grad education & industry.

How would you rate the awareness of those in the educated, policy, scientific community and upper/upper-middle class? More often than not, even the worst of elites still need a cadre of relatively well-off people to legitimize and execute their orders. Today, how close (or far) are those well-off people from casting aside the corrupt top?

Its not a job for a small or big teams. It requires state sponsorship & MDIT commitment.

@messiach if you ever manage to get things going (perhaps by showing how the Indians are developing their own gas turbines), please do let me know. Over the years I've been approached by two engineers, I believe both from RR, one a convert to Islam who dearly wanted to help Pakistan or Turkey and work for either, but I couldn't help either of them.

 

[ALi Rizwan]

Middle class is eliminated. Its just rich and poor. I have been left devastated by the state of engineering infrastructure. People here want to know about AeSp future & FC-1/FGF and i do'nt want to let them know their national industrial infrastructure & electricity generation programmes are on their ankles.

Your industries depend upon electricity.
During Musharraf rule there was huge boom in industries(Cheap Electricity (Gas Gen)) but no effort on Cheap electricity(Mega Dams).
Your industries is always about low cost. your textile have orders but cost of production is higher. you just need to facilitate them.

Pakistan future will never change unless we realised there is one thing which is more important then METRO BUS/TRAIN, MOTORWAY, ROAD, IPP, Coal & Nuclear Power, Port,Tax Free Zone & Toll Tax
Its Multiples MEGA DAMS (Surplus+Cheap Electricity & Water)

 

[proud_indian]

Hi wish you had not dragged India into this, but since you have dragged it nontheless, let me clarify couple of things for you-
Engine development is perhaps more complicated than developing entire aircraft. There are of course failures and shortcomings in the development process especially if that is being attempted for the first time. India is no exception. I visited the def expo couple of days back and interacted with guys at GTRE--the lab responsible solely for gas turbines in India. Some of the points I wish to highlight are-

1) India spent close to $700mn on various gas turbine related development plans. Kaveri is not the first nor the last in the efforts to design a gas turbine in house. Kaveri is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious aero engine programs undertaken by India, now it is ambitious because it envisaged an engine with digital FADEC, high thrust output and lightweight. Kaveri had various challenges right from accoustic instability, shortfall in wet thrust etc etc. But most of those problems have been rectified. Now the major challenge that remains is in the field of metallurgy or newer generation of single crystal blades. India unfortunately has been able to ONLY successfully develop 1st and 2nd gen of SCBs circa 90s, whereas the west has advanced all the way to 4th gen. The $1bn+ offset clause will help GTRE validate and certify their engine for fighter application and Safran are going to help them. Validating and certifying an aero engine is not a small feat by any engineering standards.

2) There are various other programs that have drawn in a lot from Kaveri episode and they are turning out to be fine, for instance quite recently HAL designed a 25kN engine for regional airliner and trainer jets. This engine was almost entirely 3D printed in Bangalore and I happened to have visited the test rig at AERDC facility. Similarly a 1200hp engine for helicopter is also in final stages of development.View attachment 466495
View attachment 466506

3) The miniaturized turbofan engine of 400kgf class has also been test fired on a rig and they are planning to integrate it onto Nirbhay in June. This engine has slightly higher throughput than the Russian turbofan that ADE is using for Nirbhay.
What you fail to notice is that, Kaveri might have had itz shortfall but the lessons learnt were applied to various other programs. Also it gave rise to Indian industry that can fabricate various complex titanium alloys, single crystal blades among other things. #2 and #3 are some of the products spawned off the lessons learnt via Kaveri endevour.

@amardeep mishra

I was reading the HAL 2016-17 annual report and this is an excerpt from that report regarding the progress of HTFE 25 engine. According to that

"Preliminary Design Review(PDR) of Engine has been completed during 2014-15. Based on core engine-1 test results the compressor efficiency was found on lower side. Hence compressor redesign was initiated. Compressor redesign completed in Apr 2017. Detailed design and drawing release will be completed by May 2017. Core engine-2 run is planned in Jan 2018 and the full engine run is planned in Jul 2018.

Can you plz put some light on whether they have tested the engine with the redesigned compressor or not.

 

[Fawadqasim1]

Building such kind of engines requires full scale related Industry and building such big scale industry you need lot of money and decades of R&D......and further you can't make it profitable until you have some customers from outside....In short building engine to power one aircraft is a highly risky business example is India.....Kaveri debacle......

Russia and USA plus other developed nation ....producing engines since last century while our elders fighting for independence...........we need to cover 100 years gap which is quite impossible.....

What we can do is TOT.....

we don't in the age of smart furnaces cnc machining 3d printing one can produce strategic components and equipment at any scale