Kaveri Engine Undergoes More Flight Trials In Russia

SOURCE : AviationWeek.com
India’s Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) and Russia’s Gromov Flight Research Institute (GFRI) have conducted more flight trials of India’s Kaveri engine on a modified Flying Test Bed (FTB) IL-76 transport aircraft.
Mohan Rao, director of the Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) in Bangalore, told Aviation Week that flight data analysis from the first flight on Nov. 3 was submitted to GFRI officials, who presented a detailed report to Russia’s Ministry of Industries.
“Based on this report, we got the clearances for further flights. We had the second flight after a week for more than an hour in very similar conditions to the first flight,” Mohan said. “The engine was inspected again and all flight parameters were analyzed. During the second flight, we went up to 5 km. at 0.6 Mach and 4 km. at 0.4 Mach. We need to study the engine data and combustion stability.”
GTRE officials checked close to 50 test points, including low Mach number, low altitude, and high altitude. In one test, the Kaveri was on switch-off mode while the IL-76 took off to check an “inflight windmill” start.
“The engine was ignited [in] midair at windmill speeds and it was a success. We also had an ‘altitude relight’ to evaluate the engine’s restart capabilities. We had so far a total of three flights,” Mohan said.
DRDO plans to conduct nearly 60 test flights in the next couple of months to gauge engine reliability, safety and airworthiness.
“Now we will try out different Mach numbers and at different altitudes. The engine will come back to India after five months so that we can carry out further tests. We are aggressively conducting the flight-test campaign,” Mohan added.