A private start-up is inching closer to developing an indigenous engine to power cruise missiles and larger unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), that could stop the country’s dependence on foreign firms.
The Hyderabad-headquartered Paninian India Private Limited, has completed the “conceptual validation” of its 4.5 KN Turbojet Engine and the prototype development has started.
The engine is further being developed into a new family in the range of 3-12 kilonewtons (kN) thrust, along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) augmented digital twin companions.
AI augmented Digital Twins are meant for legacy engine performance modelling and prognostics for supporting mission performance and life extension efforts for aircraft like Jaguar, Sukhoi and Mirage 2000 of the Indian Air Force.
Such Digital Twins — required for cutting-edge prognostics, engine health and performance monitoring — have been conceived entirely from scratch in the country by Indian engineers, he said, adding that India can carry out life extension of engines locally and accurately without resorting to foreign assistance.
While Paninin has started setting up an actual test bed for its engine, the plan ahead is for the individual parts of the engine to undergo 2,000 hours of testing at the National Aerospace Laboratory.
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has been working on an aero engine in the 4.5kN category, which industry sources say is a reverse engineering of the Russian NPO Saturn 36 MT engine which is used by India.
