| JSC Kuznetsov | |
| Type: | Joint-stock company |
| Industry: | Engineering |
| Predecessors: | --> |
| Successors: | --> |
| Founders: | --> |
| Hq Location City: | Samara |
| Hq Location Country: | Russia |
| Areas Served: | --> |
| Products: | Aircraft engines, rocket engines, turbines |
| Owners: | --> |
| Parent: | United Engine Corporation |
JSC Kuznetsov (Russian: ПАО «Кузнецов») is one of the leading Russian producers of aircraft engines, liquid-propellant rocket engines as well as aeroderivative gas turbines and modular stations.
The current joint-stock company was established through the consolidation of several Samara-based aerospace engine companies, including JSC N.D. Kuznetsov SNTK, JSC Samara Design Bureau of Machine Building and JSC NPO Povolzhskiy AviTI.
The company was established in 1912 as the Gnome Factory of Moscow, after the French aircraft engine company Gnome et Rhône which supplied the engine parts assembled by the plant.[1] In 1925 it was renamed 'Frunze Factory No. 24', after Bolshevik leader Mikhail Frunze.[1] The factory was evacuated to its current location in Samara in 1941.[1]
The Samara Frunze Engine-Building Production Association was one of the principal aerospace engine production complexes in Russia, with six plants and 25,000 employees in the early 1990s. It has produced turbojet and turboprop engines for military and civil use, including Blackjack and Backfire bombers and Tu-154 transports. The NK-12M engine produced by Frunze is the most powerful turboprop in the world. Samara Frunze also produced engines for the Salyut spacecraft and for the Mir space station.[2]
Re-established as the joint-stock company Motorostroitel in 1994, it retained this denomination until 2010, when it was merged with several other Samara-based engine plants on the verge of bankruptcy.[1] It then took the name of one of new its subsidiaries, Kuznetsov Design Bureau.[3]
The current production range of JSC Kuznetsov includes the NK-33 rocket engine, the Kuznetsov NK-32 aviation engine and the NK-37ST industrial engine.[4] In 2016 the company announced plans to produce a modernized version of its NK-32 engine by the end of the year.
The Kuznetzov Bureau first became notable for producing the monstrous Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop engine that powered the Tupolev Tu-95 bomber beginning in 1952 as a development of the Junkers 0022 engine. The new engine eventually generated about 15,000 horsepower (11.2 megawatts), far more than any Western turboprop engine of its time, and it was also used in the large Antonov An-22 Soviet Air Force transport.
Kuznetsov also produced the Kuznetsov NK-8 turbofan engine in the 90kN class that powered the Ilyushin Il-62 and Tupolev Tu-154 airliners. This engine was next upgraded to become the about 125kN Kuznetsov NK-86 engine that powered the Ilyushin Il-86 aircraft. This Bureau also produced the Kuznetsov NK-144 afterburning turbofan engine. This engine powered the early models of the Tupolev Tu-144 SST.
The Kuznetsov Design Bureau also produced the Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofan engine that was used on the Lun-class ekranoplan. (Only one such aircraft has ever been produced.)
Kuznetsov's most powerful aviation engine is the Kuznetsov NK-321 that propels the Tupolev Tu-160 bomber and was formerly used in the later models of the Tu-144 supersonic transport (an SST that is now obsolete and no longer flown). The NK-321 produced a maximum of about 245kN of thrust.
Kuznetsov aircraft engines include:
NK-321 (136 kN cruise [5] 245 kN, NK321M 280 to 300/350 kN (max 386)
NK-32-02 for An-124 Tu-160 and PAK DA
Kuznetsov industrial gas turbines include:
In 1959, Sergey Korolev ordered a new design of rocket engine from the Kuznetzov Bureau for the Global Rocket 1 (GR-1) Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which was developed but never deployed. The result was the NK-9, one of the first staged-combustion cycle rocket engines. The design was developed by Kuznetsov into the NK-15 and NK-33 engines in the 1960s, and claimed them to be the highest-performance rocket engines ever built, which were to propel the N1 lunar rocket—one that was never successfully launched.[6] As of 2011, the aging NK-33 remains the most efficient (in terms of thrust-to-mass ratio) LOX/Kerosene rocket engine ever created.[7]
The Orbital Sciences Antares light-to-medium-lift launcher has two modified NK-33 in its first stage, a solid second stage and a hypergolic orbit stage.[8] The NK-33s are first imported from Russia to the United States and then modified into Aerojet AJ26s, which involves removing some harnessing, adding U.S. electronics, qualifying it for U.S. propellants, and modifying the steering system.[9]
The Antares rocket was successfully launched from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on April 21, 2013. This marked the first successful launch of the NK-33 heritage engines built in early 1970s.[10]
Kuznetsov rocket engines include: