Subbu Venkatachalam, Head of Defence & Aerospace, Carborundum Universal Limited (CUMI).
How is CUMI’s work in advanced materials aligning with the Indian Navy’s modernisation roadmap, particularly in areas such as survivability, stealth, and lifecycle performance of naval platforms?
The Indian Navy’s modernisation roadmap leads to three definite goals – long-term strategic advantage, operational preparedness, and self-reliance. CUMI’s 7-decade expertise in advanced materials ensures we have an intrinsic understanding of the Navy’s current and future priorities to realise these ambitions. Bearing in view planned large-scale fleet expansion, performance innovations, future tech integration and long service life, our solutions are tailored to support every one of these objectives.
With advanced materials, the most significant advantage is that they can combine a wide array of cutting-edge capabilities. A great example here is of technical ceramics such as Reaction Bonded Silicon Carbide, Zirconia Toughened Alumina, and high-purity Alumina. These materials provide the dual advantages of lighter weight with a high strength-to-weight ratio, when compared with steel. The lighter weight advantage allows for easy manoeuvrability and higher speed. They are also highly resistant to fire, bullets, and blasts, ensuring superior protection and crew survivability in unpredictable and demanding maritime environments.
Advanced ceramics are particularly useful for specialised applications such as exceptional heat resistance, wear and corrosion resistance, and electrical insulation. They not only help secure ships and crew, but also extend the service life of expensive components and equipment, making naval operations more agile and efficient.
Today, multi-domain naval warfare means that stealth is key to control the timing and terms of engagement, and execute missions with higher success rates. Solutions like the resin film infusion technique help design hull-mounted sonar domes to maintain high acoustic transparency. This kind of layered or sandwich technique allows the use of diverse core materials within the resin film to enable advanced sonar capabilities, with negligible distortion in frequency or intensity. This also makes it central to naval stealth, particularly for submarines, as it prevents the return of active sonar signals and significantly reduces the likelihood of detection by enemy sensors. RFI can also augment resistance to impact, strength, and durability of naval vessels.
From your perspective, how is ‘material capability’ increasingly shaping naval procurement and upgrade decisions, compared to traditional parameters like propulsion, electronics, or weapons systems?
The Make in India mandate and more nuanced geopolitical dynamics have led many OEMs to rethink their supply chains and keenly assess the materials that go into developing defence systems. Moreover, with the different DRDO labs and materials Centres of Excellence in top-tier research institutes like the IITs, there is better understanding now of how material capability is inherently tied to how a platform or system performs – whether in terms of protection or performance.
When it comes to a comparison with traditional parameters like propulsion, electronics, or weapons systems, I would say it’s more like giving them a massive upgrade. This is because materials such as advanced ceramics, nanomaterials, composites, and other new-age materials are being used to design the smallest but most significant of parts to enable robust performance in propulsion, electronics, and combat systems that we never thought possible. So, the material capability angle has definitely enriched the conversation around naval applications and maritime security, and prompted clear actions influencing naval procurement and upgrades.
When upgrading ageing vessels and legacy fleets, what are the most critical material challenges – corrosion, fatigue, weight, thermal stress – and how can advanced materials address these without major structural redesigns?
All of these are critical when viewed from the lens of current advancements in materials science and the immense possibilities. Traditional materials used in ageing vessels and legacy fleets are found to considerably limit speed, with lower endurance thresholds to evolving ballistic threats and fire hazards, while requiring frequent overhauls.
By assessing the most critical areas, such as the interiors of engine compartments, hangars for aircraft, gun mounts, and the interior and exterior of ship hulls, they can be retrofitted with their advanced material counterparts. The key is to consider vital aspects like weight, fire and impact resistance, thermal stress, corrosion, and fatigue, while also ensuring they are designed to be integrated with frontier tech in future.
Lightweight ceramic composite armour panels retrofitted onto these key areas are highly anti-corrosive, withstand fatigue well, while improving fire and impact resistance. As an example, Silicon Carbide-based ceramic composites can enable a significant 25% weight saving over conventional steel ballistic protection solutions. This results in increased manoeuvrability, higher speed, withfar lower maintenance costs over time. These solutions also serve as a resilient, protective barrier against a wide range of ballistic threats for mission-critical equipment such as the main armaments and other exposed essential systems.
Can you share examples where innovative abrasives, ceramics, or engineered materials can significantly extend the service life of naval assets while reducing maintenance downtime?
The best example here would be of thermal spray powders. They form the base material to produce thermal barrier coatings and wear resistant coatings, predominantly used in areas most prone to thermal stress, corrosion and wear, like the hot sections of engines and on turbine blades. This helps avoid frequent and expensive maintenance cycles, reduced downtime, while ensuring extended operational life.
Similarly, in abrasives, the creep-feed or ‘fir tree’ grinding technique is effective particularly where components demand high dimensional accuracy, superior surface integrity, and consistent performance under extreme operating conditions. It enables precision grinding of parts, minimises thermal and residual stress damage, improves fatigue life, and delivers consistent results on hard-to-machine materials. In the naval context, creep-feed grinding is used to manufacture propulsion system components, pump and fluid-handling components, weapon and launcher subsystems, marine turbine and power-generation parts, specialty materials and hard alloys.
Looking ahead, what new possibilities do material innovations open up for future-ready maritime fleets – especially in areas such as lightweighting, noise reduction, energy efficiency, and resistance to harsh marine environments?
Innovation in materials is becoming a decisive enabler of future-ready maritime fleets. Advances in materials science are revealing performance gains that go far beyond traditional hull design or propulsion upgrades.
Lightweighting and higher payload efficiency have emerged as a key priority. New lightweight composites, advanced aluminium alloys, and high-strength steels allow vessels to reduce structural weight without sacrificing strength. This enables higher payload capacity, improved speed and manoeuvrability, and lower fuel consumption. For naval platforms, lighter structures also support greater weapon, sensor, or mission module integration within the same displacement limits. To illustrate, CFRP sheets, tubes, and custom parts make warships lighter, quicker, and easily manoeuvrable. Advanced ceramics are deployed in missile components, radomes, and radar systems, enabling superior, reliable performance.
In terms of noise reduction and stealth performance, material innovations in acoustic dampening, vibration isolation, and specialty coatings help reduce radiated noise from hulls, propulsion systems, and machinery on board the vessel. This enhances underwater stealth, improves survivability in contested environments, and supports quieter operations for submarines and surface combatants. It also contributes to lower environmental impact by reducing marine noise pollution. The use of the nanomaterial graphene can potentially help minimise the radar cross section, to avoid detection by enemy vessels.
Addressing energy efficiency and lower lifecycle fuel costs are advanced coatings that reduce hull friction, improved thermal insulation materials, and next-generation propulsion materials. They help contribute to better fuel economy and reduced emissions. Materials optimised for hybrid propulsion systems, batteries, and fuel cells are also enabling cleaner and more energy-efficient maritime operations, supporting both operational endurance and sustainability goals.
To improve resistance in harsh marine environments, marine-grade composites and protective surface treatments are extending operational life in saltwater, high-humidity, and extreme temperature conditions. These materials reduce maintenance cycles, minimise downtime, and improve fleet availability and lifecycle cost efficiency, critical for both commercial and defence fleets. Examples include anti-skid coatings, and anti-corrosion coatings that protect metal components against degradation due to moisture, oxidation, or continued exposure to harsh marine environments.
Innovations in fire protection also involve passive measures including specially fabricated space- and weight-sensitive thermal ceramic blankets. These are ideal for thermal and passive fire protection of bulkheads, ship decks, engine rooms, exhaust manifolds, and cabin doors.
Another revolution in materials science for strategic applications is Phase Change Materials (PCMs). Their ability to store and release thermal energy over a large temperature band without requiring external power. They enable passive temperature regulation, peak heat load management, lower fuel consumption, and silent operation especially in noise-sensitive environments. Highly energy-efficient, PCMs could find use in marine applications particularly to maintain stable temperatures in living quarters, engine rooms, and prevent sensitive equipment or machinery from overheating or freezing.
Smart materials with self-healing capabilities and embedded sensors open the door to real-time structural health monitoring and predictive maintenance. This enables navies to detect fatigue, cracks, or material degradation early, improving safety and readiness.
How do advanced materials contribute to the Navy’s goals around stealth and signature management, including acoustic, thermal, and electromagnetic profiles?
Advanced materials such as graphene and advanced composites are opening up new possibilities in the areas of naval stealth and signature management. Graphene-based coatings and laminates can help dissipate heat more efficiently, reducing thermal signatures, while also offering potential electromagnetic shielding benefits.
Advanced composites and acoustic materials are used to dampen vibrations and absorb sound, lowering underwater noise levels. Together, these materials enable naval platforms to operate quieter, cooler, and with a smaller electromagnetic footprint – key to maintaining stealth in modern maritime operations.
With India’s strong push for indigenisation, how is local development and manufacturing of critical materials changing sustainment strategies for the Navy, particularly for spares, repairs, and mid-life upgrades?
Historically, India has been dependent on imports for mission-critical materials. With the evolving geopolitical situation, securing supply and processing in-country is now a strategic priority. Domestic manufacturing critical, and in some cases, unavailable materials has made it considerably easier on several major fronts for the Navy.
Indigenous materials which are globally benchmarked, processed in world-class facilities, a climate of greater R&D and innovation, faster development cycles, lower induction times, tech transfers, and the cost advantage are all emerging as strategic advantages.
Such an ecosystem is ensuring faster and easier availability of spares, with reduced dependence on overseas vendors. This makes repairs quicker, mid-life upgrades easier to execute, and platforms more responsive to evolving operational needs, ultimately improving fleet availability and readiness.
In the long term, how do you see indigenous material capabilities influencing India’s strategic autonomy in naval modernisation, and what role can companies like CUMI play in building a resilient defence-industrial ecosystem?
From a strategic standpoint, strong indigenous material capabilities give India far greater control over the pace and direction of naval modernisation. They reduce vulnerability to external supply disruptions, enable faster upgrades as threats evolve, and allow the Navy to tailor platforms to its own operational requirements. This will strengthen the country’s strategic autonomy while building a more resilient and self-reliant maritime force.
Materials science leaders like CUMI function as the first link in building a strong ecosystem for indigenous defence manufacturing. By being completely backward integrated in our operations, we are involved right from the production of raw materials (grains and powders) to custom component production. Testing and qualifying them as per global benchmarks ensures OEMs not only have a strong base to work with but also shorter production cycles and faster induction into service. On the R&D front, we are involved in ground-breaking research at our in-house, state-of-the-art labs on new-age materials like graphene. We also work with ecosystem partners such as different DRDO labs, major shipyards, startups, and research institutions to continually discover new materials and applications. Through the final link of expertise and knowledge sharing with MSMEs and academia partners, we are ensuring that the entire ecosystem is moving forward at the same pace towards the same goal.
This means our Navy and the nation’s guardians can count on a robust, highly reliable indigenous ecosystem that enables India to modernise with confidence, free from external dependencies.
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