NAL Today

As an organization, NAL is India’s only civil aviation aerospace R & D organization, its competence and facilities are the best in the country and are comparable internationally.

Through a planned approach over these years, NAL has strengthened its knowledge base and has made vital technology contributions to the national aerospace programmes and its own Civil Aviation programme. With its current plans and its growing international presence, NAL is set to take off into an exciting future

Programmes

Design, development and fabrication of multirole light transport aircraft
Development of India's first all-composite trainer aircraft
Hardware and software initiatives in parallel processing technologies
Design and fabrication of advanced composite structures
Failure analysis and accident investigations

Facilities

Inauguration of the Large Scale Rotating Rig (LSRR) for Compressor and Turbine Aerodynamics Research
Trisonic wind tunnel testing of aircraft, launch vehicles and other spacecraft
Acoustic testing of satellite and satellite launchers
Fullscale fatigue testing of airframes
Transonic cascade testing for engine and aerofoil design
Dynamic test systems for modal testing and qualification testing
Dynamic wind tunnel testing
Advanced composites design, fabrication and testing
System Identification Laboratory for flight data analysis

Technologies

High Temperature Solar Selective Coatings
NAL Binary Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP)
NALSUN solar selective coatings
Moving From Micro to the Nano Age
Flight Mechanics and Control Divsion- Multi Sensor Data Fusion, Modelling and Identification 'Technology' to be NAL's core engine for the future
NAL will make a special effort to identify, develop and market spin-off technologies
NAL will make a concerted effort to obtain international technology development contracts

Divisions

NAL Tomorrow

NAL has planned out its future activities based on its present strengths and the requirements of the proposed future national aerospace programmes. Plans for immediate future are included as part of  India’s Eleventh Five Year Plan proposals (2007-2012) and some plans extend beyond this period also.  The plans aim at enhancing the current technology strengths, creating new strengths to meet the expected requirements and research projects to provide a strong scientific basis to the technology activities. Along with these, NAL will continue to make value added contributions to national programmes.

In the civil aviation area,  NAL will complete the certification of SARAS, fly the General Aviation aircraft and transfer HANSA technology to a production agency. Regional transport Aircraft will be the civil aviation thrust area.

Research projects  proposed include studies on multi-degree optimization, morphing airfoils, flapping wings concepts, automatic target recognition, advanced engine intakes, icing studies, low Reynolds number flows, glass cockpits and AMLCD, active noise control, special (nano) coatings, engine thrust vectoring etc.

Future Technology Development plans include mini gas turbines, air traffic management, damage tolerant design, fluid / surface interactions, efficient propulsion technologies and clean energy systems.  Plans in the area of materials include high strength fibres and prepregs, nano-composites, high temperature ceramics, out-of-autoclave technologies and environment friendly new processes. Forward looking technology studies will also include Scramjets, Structural Health Monitoring, Smart Structures, MEMS and stealth aircraft / coatings, micro air vehicles.

Apart from setting up Advanced Centres for Flight Mechanics and Micro Air Vehicles, upgradation of existing facilities and building new ones are also envisaged.

The above  are only a few sample areas from  NAL’s ambitious list of proposals. With the existing constraints, the plans are indeed challenging. But then challenges make work exciting and NAL community is looking forward to these tasks and rising to the occasion.