National Aerospace Laboratories

National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), is India's first & largest aerospace research firm. It was established by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at Delhi in 1959. The firm closely operates with HAL, DRDO and ISRO and has the prime responsibility of developing civilian aircraft in India. It concentrates on research in advanced topics in aerospace and related disciplines.

This article is about the Indian institution. For other uses, see National Aerospace Laboratory.

National Aerospace Laboratories
Established1 June 1959 (1 June 1959)
Field of research
Aerospace
DirectorJitendra J Jadhav
LocationBangalore, India
Operating agency
CSIR
Websitenal.res.in

Based in Bengaluru, India, NAL employs a staff of about 2,500 with about 350 full-fledged R&D professionals. NAL is equipped with facilities such as the Nilakantan Wind tunnel Centre and a computerized fatigue test facility. NAL also has facilities for the investigation of failures and accidents in the domain of aerospace engineering.

History

On 1 June 1959 the National Aeronautical Research Laboratory (NARL) was set up in Delhi, with Dr P Nilakantan as its first Director. In March 1960, it set up its office in the stables of the Palace of Maharaja of Mysore on Jayamahal Road, Bangalore as National Aeronautical Laboratory(NAL). The first Executive Council was chaired by JRD Tata and included Prof Satish Dhawan and the designer Dr V M Ghatage among its members. Originally started as National Aeronautical Laboratory, it was renamed National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in April 1993 to reflect its growing involvement in the Indian space programme, its multidisciplinary activities and global position.

Flosolver

Flosolver was a series of Indian supercomputers designed and assembled by NAL.[1][2][3] Work began on the initial computer in 1986 to help with computational fluid dynamics.[1]

Current Projects

RTA-70 (Indian Regional Jet)

CSIR has approved ₹300 crore ($75 million) to design an aeroplane that can carry 70 passengers on short flights. The project will be called RTA-70. NAL would use the money to design a digital concept plane in around two years. Once additional funding for the ₹2,000 crore project and its partners are firmed up, a prototype would be built and flown in four years. The first prototype would be a 70-seat plane. It is a family of aircraft that NAL is designing and will have three variants, a 70-seater, a 50-seater and an extended 90-seater version to be called RTA-90 with option of both Turbo prop and Turbo fan as power source.[4]

Products

Aircraft

The maiden flight of CSIR-NAL's light trainer aircraft, now called Hansa, took place on 17 November 1993. The aircraft is an ab-initio two-seat, all composite aircraft, certified by DGCA in the year 2000 under JAR-VLA certification. DGCA has promoted the use of the Hansa-3 by various flying clubs; a total of fourteen aircraft are in operation. Thirteen aircraft are currently operational in India , out of which ten are with various flying clubs and one with IIT-Kanpur.

SARAS had its maiden flight on 29 May 2004. The aircraft took off at 08:15 hrs and flew over about 25 minutes. SARAS is the first civilian aircraft designed and developed in India. Two prototypes have been built and flown (176 flight) by ASTE (IAF) flight crew. The third prototype aircraft (production standard) is under production at CSIR-NAL. Features include composite wing VERITy (Vacuum Enhanced Resin Infusion Technology), empennage, rear pressure bulkhead, front fuselage top skin and control surfaces. The aircraft will be equipped with an all glass cockpit including EICAS and 3-axis autopilot (limited authority). Powered by 2x1200 SHP turboprop PT6A-67A engines (Pratt & Whitney) driving 5 blade MT-Propellers. SARAS is capable of flying up to 30,000 ft (cabin altitude 8,000 ft) and is capable of operation from short air fields. Certification is under progress by CEMILAC and is to be completed by 2013. SARAS has been designed for many roles viz, executive transport, light package carrier, remote sensing, air ambulance etc.

The first flight of C-NM5 on 1 September 2011.
  • NAL NM5 - Five Seater - General Aviation Aircraft

C-NM5 is the country's first public-private partnership (PPP) for development of civil transport aircraft in collaboration with M/s Mahindra Aerospace Pvt Ltd (MAPL). On 1 September 2011, a milestone event for India's first public-private partnership in aircraft development, and a bold dream became reality; C-NM5 designed & developed jointly by CSIR-NAL & Mahindra Aerospace successfully undertook its first flight in Australia. C-NM5 is powered by a 300 HP piston engine driving a 3-blade propeller cruising at a speed of 160 knots with a maximum AUW (All Up Weight) of 1525 kg; glass cockpit is a customer option. It is an ideal aircraft for air taxi, air ambulance, training, tourism and cargo.

Unmanned aerial vehicles

See also

References
  1. Bhatkar, Vijay P. (1990). "Parallel computing : An Indian perspective". CONPAR 90 — VAPP IV. 457: 10–25. doi:10.1007/3-540-53065-7_84. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
  2. Sinha, UN (1997). "A Decade of Parallel Meteorological Computing on the Flosolver". In Hoffmann, Geerd-R (ed.). Making its mark : proceedings of the Seventh ECMWF Workshop on the Use of Parallel Processors in Meteorology, Reading, UK, November 2-6, 1996. World Scientific. pp. 449–460. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  3. Sinha, U. N. (November 1998). "On parallel computing — Indian trends". Resonance. 3 (11): 2–5. doi:10.1007/BF02838704. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  4. K. Raghu (14 April 2008). "Aerospace lab to design, build 90-seat aeroplane". Livemint. Retrieved 13 December 2012.
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