Established over  in : 1959.
 

MANDATE

• To carry out R & D work in aerospace engineering and releated areas with a view to applying the knowledge to the design, construction and operation of aircraft.
• To undertake contract/consultancy work on design, development and testing of aircrafts and aerospace-related hardware and software.
• To maintain and operate major national aerospace facilities: national trisonic aerodynamic facility (NTAF), full-scale fatigue testing facility, composite structures laboratory, acoustic test facility, etc.
• Serve as a repository of scientific knowledge in aeuronautics and aerospace.
• To offer advanced training in diverse aerospace disciplines and information technologies.

MAIN FACILITIES

• National Trisonic Aerodynamical Facilities (NTAF) with three (1.2m 0.6 and 0.3m) wind tunnels. NTAF, which celebrated its silver jubilee in 1992 continues to be the only one of its kind in the country and is extensively used in all the navigational aerospace projects involving aircrafts, missiles and satellites launch vehicles. A new (1.5m x 1,5m) low speed tunnel has also been recently been comissioned at NTAF.
• Full-scale Fatigue Test Facility with 24 actuators and controls to simulate service loading and 96 channels of data acquisation, an eight actuator component fatigue testing facility, two axis shaker table, materials evaluation laboratory equipped high temerature furnace and steam generator. Many of these facilities are used round-the-clock for data generation and certification of LCA components.
• The Acoustic Test Facility (ATF) witha  reverberation chamber of 1100 cu.m. , and an aheivable overall sound pressure level of  157 dB. The ATF is now over ten years old, has completed over 1100 blowdowns and is financially self-sufficient.
• Composite Structures Laboratory with all the necessary infrastructure (waterjet cutter, preptag cutting machine, c-scan facility, clean room etc.), chiefly for work on the LCA airframe. Two large autoclaves are also available, including the newly comissioned computer controlled 3m x 7m autoclaves, with a working space of 2.8m x 5.2m and capable of applying 7 bar pressure at 250 ^oC.
• Composite Product Development and Application Centre (COMPAC): COMPAC, set up with CTD/USAID funding, offers facilities for training and development of qualified and skilled manpower for the composite industry; process and product development and technology transfer to industry; and testing, quality assurance and certification services.
• Advanced Information Technology Centre (AITC) : AITC, also setup with CTD/USAID funding, offers advanced training facilities in information technologies such as CAD/CAM, GIS, Unix & C, DTP and database development.
• Other R & D facilities include cascade tunnels, which can test cascades upto 75mm chord; a dynamic simulation wind tunnel to stydy stability derivatives of aircrafts and missiles, a computer assisted vibration test and analysis system (CAVITAS) for vibration tests on complete airframes and helicopters and the NISSAT access centre for international databases (NACID).

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS                          

• NAL has taken up the leadership of a national team formed to develop the carbon fibre wings for the LCA. It has also taken up the responsibility for design and development of co-cured and co-branded carbon fibre fin and for fabrication of the composite rudder of LCA. Nearly 80% of the composite parts of the LCA are being made by NAL, which will be handed over to the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA). The first flight of LCA is scheduled for June 1996.
• Design, development and comissioning of India's largest (3m x 7m) autoclave which is being exclusively used for making composite parts for LCA. A major order has been obtained from HAL for the delivery of an even larger (4m x 8m) autoclave.
• development and validation of the LCA flight control law as a part of the LCA National Team work.
• Design, development, fabrication and test flight of HANSA-2, a light aircraft, made entirely out of composite materials, which is expected to become a very attractive trainer aircraft. The first test flight of the experimental prototype (HANSA-2) took place in November 1993. The production prototype (HANSA-3) is expected to fly by end of 1995.
• Agreement with MDB (Russia) for the joint development of the multirole SARAS aircraft. A full-scale mock-up of the aircraft was displayed at the Bangalore Air Show in December 1993.
• Development of readout facilities for DFDR/QAR for all aircraft used by India's national carriers, resulting in substantial foreign exchange saving, and of novel techniques for cockpit voice recorder data analysis. A portable version of the readout faciliy has also been developed.
• Successfull completion of the project to model and predict bahaviour of aircraft work vortices at busy international airports such as the London-Heathrow. This project was undertaken after winning on international tender floated by the Civil Aviation Authority, UK.
• Completion of a major study with TIFAC on the market oppourtunities for civil aviation products and services in India during nex 10-15 year peroid.
• Winning a contract fron Boeing Airplane Co, USA, for collaborative research in damage tolerance testing and evaluation of fatigue performance of lug joints with and without part- through cracks.
• Completion of a 20,000 blowdowns at he 1.2m trisonic wind tunnel setting ner records in tunnel utilization efficiency.
• Development of Flosolver, paraller computer offering a sustained computing speed of over 60 Mflops. The 8-processor was India's first (and only) parallel computer to successively port and pallelize the NCMRWF's T-80 weather prediction code. Graphical post-processing of data also ensures excellant visual displays of weather data.
• Development of a large number of computer codes to handle problen in fluid dynamics, heat transfer and stress analysis.Codes developed by NAL have been extensively used by DRDO, ISRO and HAL for their aerospace and missile development programmes.
• Successful commercialization of the foil bearing technology which has wide applications especially in the textile industry.
• Development of a large number of innovative surface technologies using electrochemistry, NAL-SUN, a low-cost black chromium plating process has been transferred to a dozen of industries sofar.Patents for NALSUN have been obtained in India, USA, Australia and Europe. A process for heavy nickel plating of seal discs of nuclear reactors, which resulted in very significant foreign exchange savings and enabled the country to fight a crippling technology embargo. NAL's success in these areas have resulted in a major DST-funded Indo-German

DIRECTOR
Dr T. S. Prahlad

CONTACT ADDRESS
PB 1779 Bangalore 560 017.
Telephone: (091)80-5270584, 5265579, 5273351, 5279611.
Telegram : NAEROLAB, BANGALORE.
Telex    : 0845-2279 NAL IN.
Fax      : (091)80-5260862, 5279670.
E-mail   :prahlad@cmmacs.ernet.in
          prahlad@csnal.ren.nic.in
          prahlad@nalsic.ernet.in