Information Pasteboard
Weekly reports of meetings at NAL, snippets of R&D activity, conference announcements and other features of popular interest
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News and Events #IP 884, 31 Aug - 6 Sep2009
Training on “Aircraft Structural Assembly Techniques and Quality Standards” to technicians from Tata Advanced Systems Limited, New Delhi M/s. Tata Advanced Systems Ltd. (TASL), New Delhi requested NAL during the middle of July 2009 to provide an In-house training for a period of four weeks to their newly recruited technicians in the area of “Aircraft Structural Assembly Techniques and Quality Standards” considering NAL’s strength in the areas of aircraft design, development and manufacturing. The purpose of this specialized training was to familiarize their newly inducted technicians with aerospace structural assembly practices so that they acquire the necessary skill levels for carrying out the assembly operations which are crucial in any aircraft production plan. The programme was tailor made to meet the requirements of TASL, wherein the technicians had “hands on practice” coupled with theory classes which were conducted by Senior Scientist from NAL and its collaborators in civil aircraft programme M/s Aircraft Design & Engineering Services Private Limited (ADES). This programme started on 3rd August, 2009 and concluded on 31st August 2009, and was planned and coordinated by Head, C-CADD and Head, ESD. The theory classes conducted in the morning session at C-CADD, emphasized the critical requirements of quality and reliability. The topics covered included general aircraft / helicopter engineering, aircraft materials, fasteners, hand tools used in aircraft structure build, guidelines and technicality of rivet forming and their acceptance standards, usage of sealants and their types, study of aircraft structural assembly drawings, quality assurance practices and inspection requirements. The practical training was carried out at C-CADD Saras Hangar where the technicians underwent specialized training on different types of hand tools and their operations, layout, marking, rivet up assembly as per drawing using round and countersunk head solid rivets, blind rivets and other fasteners and also carryout checks on the riveting quality. The technicians were also trained to use different types of drilling and riveting guns, rivet drivers, bucking bars/ reaction blocks and other hand tools. The technicians were evaluated with a mid term and final test. In the final test every technician had to fabricate a sheet metal component based on drawing given by TASL. The program successfully concluded with a valedictory function organized at KTMD seminar hall on 31st August 2009 which was attended by Lt. Gen (Retd.) Davinder Kumar, CEO & MD, TASL, who in his remarks informed that TASL would be manufacturing fuselage cabins of S-92 helicopter at their upcoming Hyderabad plant and whole heartedly thanked Director, NAL and the faculty for providing such a high quality training which would benefit them to successfully accomplish the aero structure projects. Dr A.R. Upadhya, Director, NAL in his remarks mentioned the importance of the involvement of private sector in aerospace industry and said that he will be particularly happy to see Tata group partnering in aerospace programs for the benefit of the country. He further expressed NAL’s keenness to work with Tata group as possibilities exist in many areas, including the design and development of Regional Transport Aircraft (RTA). Director, NAL then presented the Best Trainee Awards and distributed the course certificates to the TASL Technicians. Mr M S Chidananda, Head, C-CADD and Mr S Ravishankar, Head, ESD also spoke on the occasion. The programme concluded with vote of thanks by Dr M N Sathyanarayana, Jt. Head, KTMD. S Ravishankar #IP 883, 24 - 30 Aug 2009 The international conference on Smart Materials and Nanotechnology (SMN2009)
The conference Offered many opportunities to communicate with colleagues from a variety of disciplines in universities, companies, factories, R&D organizations and governments from all over the world. The conference dealt with the integration of smart materials and nanotechnology for applications ranging from bioengineering to photonics, with emphasis on the application in aerospace engineering. It also addressed and predicted novel developments in this field. Various topics including Shape-memory Alloys and Polymer, Electro-Active Polymer (EAP), Piezo-materials, Multifunctional materials, Smart composites, Fibre Optic sensor, Wireless sensor, MEMS sensors and actuators, Electro and magneto restrictive materials and fluids, Nano composites and others were discussed. There were 8 plenary speakers, 54 keynote speakers who spoke & inspired the attendees. Roughly 390 papers were presented in 61 Specialist sessions, 280 papers in General Sessions (8 parallel sessions) and 110 papers in Poster Sessions. I was requested to chair the session on “Sensors & Actuators”. This was my first experience at that & I was the first speaker in the same session on 9th July 2009. My co – chair was Dr. Kean Aw from Newzealand. My paper was “Active Vibration Control of a Composite Wing Model using PZT Sensors/Actuators & Virtex – 4 FPGAs” and it waswell received. The plenary speech about the research and practice of Smart Materials and Structures in Mainland China by Jinping Ou, Dalian University of Technology was particularly impressive.
Shashikala Prakash #IP 882, 17 - 23 Aug 2009 A lecture was organised by ISAMPE Bangalore Chapter on 14th August 2009 at KTMD seminar hall, NAL. Dr. C Divakar, Chairman, ISAMPE Bangalore Chapter welcomed the speaker Dr. CM Manjunatha and the audience. He briefly introduced the speaker to the audience. Dr. CM Manjunatha, Scientist, Structural Technologies Division, NAL, gave a lecture on ‘The fatigue behaviour of a GFRP nano-composite’. He presented lucidly the results of a systematic study on fatigue behaviour of silica based nano-composites by him at Imperial College, London, UK. The summary of the lecture is presented. A thermosetting epoxy polymer was modified by incorporating (i) 9 wt.% CTBN rubber micro particles, (ii) 10 wt. % silica nano particles, and (iii) both 9 wt.% rubber micro-particles and 10 wt.% silica nano particles. The neat and all the modified resins were then used to produce bulk epoxy sheets and GFRP composites. Under constant amplitude tensile fatigue at stress ratio R = 0.1, the addition of either the rubber micro particles or silica nano particles in the resin enhanced the bulk epoxy fatigue life by ~4 times. The addition of both micron-rubber and nano-silica particles resulted in further significant enhancement of the epoxy fatigue life, by about 6-10 times. The energy dissipating mechanisms such as rubber cavitation-plastic deformation, silica particle debonding-plastic void growth were observed which contribute towards improved fatigue life of bulk epoxy polymers. The GFRP composites with modified epoxy matrices, under constant amplitude tensile fatigue , also exhibit improved fatigue behaviour. The rubber micro particles or silica nano particles independently increased the fatigue life by about 3-4 times, whereas presence of both these particles enhanced the fatigue life by about 6-10 times. The suppressed matrix cracking in the modified epoxy matrix and reduced crack propagation contribute to significant improvement in fatigue life of GFRP composites. The fatigue life of GFRP composite with neat and hybrid epoxy matrices were observed to increase with stress ratio from R = 0.1 to 0.7. However, the GFRP nano-composite exhibit higher fatigue life over that of GFRP with neat matrix, at all stress ratios investigated. Under a typical three-step tensile block load sequence, the GFRP with hybrid matrix exhibits about 30% higher fatigue life over that of GFRP with neat matrix. The predicted fatigue life using various models compared reasonably well with experimental results. This study is expected to initiate interest amongst aerospace research community for application of nano- composites in air frame structures. Dr. Anjana Jain, Secretary, ISAMPE Bangalore Chapter gave the vote of thanks. The lecture was well attended by ISAMPE members and also other scientists from NAL. Dr. C. Divakar and Dr. Anjana Jain Next Aerofest at Manipal, Belgaum and Bijapur Aerofest is an event introducing youth to the exciting world of aviation and flying and also to create an interest as a profession in the students. The phase I of Aerofest was conducted during 19 - 24 December 2008 at Mangalore in association with Mainpal University, Manipal & National Institute of Technology-Karnataka, Suratkhal. Since then, we have continued our effort in conducting Aerofest and gone beyond the boundaries of Karnataka. Recently, phase II of Aerofest was organized at PARK College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore during 7-10 March 2009 and at Srinidhi Institute of Science and Technology, Hyderabad during 18-20 April 2009. I am certain that NAL has made an excellent impression on young minds through this program. Next Aerofest is planned at Manipal Institute of Technology, Mainpal during 1 - 3 of October and at Gogte College and KLE Society’s College of Engineering and Technology, Belgaum during 28 – 31 October followed by BLDEA College of Engineering and Technology, Bijapur during 5 - 7 of November 2009. C V Giri Raj #IP 881, 10 - 16 Aug 2009
Dr. Sinha obtained his engineering degree in automobile engineering in 1967 from Bhagalpur University and his PhD from IIT Kanpur in 1976. He joined NAL in 1972 when Dr Valluri invited him. It is reported that in the interview rather than being questioned, Dr. Sinha conducted a lesson to the panel members on hypersonic flows. Initially he worked in the Belur campus on many aerodynamics problems such as transonic small perturbation theory, conformal mapping, supersonic flows etc. He popularized study of advanced mathematical techniques among the scientists and also worked on gas dynamic lasers. Many colleagues would seek him out for consultation on particularly tricky equations or physical concepts. A trend which continues to this day. Some of the programs he developed during that time, on supersonic wave drag calculation became part of the NAL SOFFTS library and were also used extensively in the country's aircraft design programs. The year 1986 was a turning point in his career. Faced with the shortage of computing resources for fluid dynamic calculations, the scientists approached Prof. Narasimha who in turn suggested that the building of a parallel computing system in-house could be a solution. This challenge was taken up by Dr. Sinha, who at that time did not know much of electronics, and the Flosolver project was born. It is creditable that Dr. Sinha and his team developed Flosolver Mk1, India’s first parallel computer, within a year. It is not known to many that other parallel computer development programs in the country, such as those of CDAC, were started following the success of the NAL efforts. Since then was no looking back and Dr. Sinha led the Flosolver lab to develop many generations of parallel computing systems. The current version under development is Mk 8. Right from the time of Mk1, the focus was to develop integrated hardware-software platforms for solving fluid dynamical problems (hence the name Flosolver), and not general purpose machines. Another significant event was in 1993, with the taking up of DST’s project to parallelize a global weather prediction model which was being used by NCMRWF for operational forecasts. The NAL team was the first to complete the parallelization. It is an indicator of Dr. Sinha’s vision that he did not see the work as just an exercise in computing, but the potential it offered. He saw numerical weather prediction as a special case of computational fluid dynamics and started steering the Flosolver group towards this. After many years of working with the basic equations, various approximations, algorithms of the spectral code, the NAL team had a re-engineered GCM with which further studies could be undertaken. The integrated approach to computing also led to a new idea of how to build a communication device which would be optimal for weather prediction codes. This concept led to the development of the NAL FloSwitch (patented). In recognition of these efforts, in 2001, a national team led by Dr. Sinha was awarded the New Millenium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative (NMITLI) project to build an integrated system for modeling the Indian monsoon. The NMITLI project saw a quantum leap in the R&D achievements of the Flosolver Unit. Many versions of the communication hardware, (FloSwitch, FloOptiLink, Flosolver Mk6) were developed. The modeling activity included the development of the Varsha GCM: with new features such as the boundary layer scaling appropriate for the low-wind regimes which characterize the Indian sub-continent. In a break from tradition, a C version of the Varsha GCM was developed. Another new direction advocated by Dr. Sinha was multi-precision computing. To the best of our knowledge, the VarshaMP is the only global weather prediction code to have the capability to perform computations with any desired number of digits: this is important given the sensitivity of weather computing to perturbations. In 2005, Dr. Sinha took another important decision: to start making experimental forecasts with the NMITLI hardware and Varsha GCM. This ensured that the project provided value to the country as a whole. After the initial five day forecasts, he took the bold step of making one month forecasts which is against the conventional meteorological practice. It is heartening to note that the Ministry of Earth Sciences now supports the Flosolver program and the India Meteorological Department uses the NAL forecasts in its assessment of the monsoon. The story of the Flosolver programme has been described very well in the book bought out by Dr. Srinivas Bhogle. Apart from his scientific acheivements, Dr. Sinha has many other accomplishments to his credit: building a very good book collection in the library, teaching a very large number of students, taking good care of his colleagues. His nature is such that people cannot say no to him. The series of birthday lectures by Prof. Narasimha at NAL is one such example. Other aspects of Dr. Sinha which his friends and colleagues associate with him are: Violin, Hawaii chappals, lemon tea and lots of books. Dr. Sinha is also very passionate about things he believes in. It is sheer will power which saw him lead the group through a difficult phase of the NMITLI project, following his eye surgery. Many colleagues at NAL and elsewhere find it difficult to believe that Dr. Sinha has actually retired. It is difficult to imagine that a person who has been working so hard for all these years is no longer on the NAL rolls. He has still many dreams to fulfill and his colleagues know that he will be visiting NAL often to continue to guide the projects he started. At this juncture, we wish him all the best for another phase of his life. T. N. Venkatesh #IP 880, 3 - 9 Aug 2009 Launch of JCCC@INSTIRC - CSIR-DST's Journal Access Gateway JCCC, a single point access to CSIR & DST’s e-journal collection was launched at NAL on 30th July 2009. JCCC - J-Gate Custom Content for Consortia is a customized web portal developed for the benefit of scientists in CSIR & DST Labs to access all e-journals subscribed by the Consortium and additionally access and share journals subscribed by each of the CSIR and DST Labs. An Excellent tool with Browse and Search facility, JCCC covers research papers from 6700+ journals with millions of articles. Allows ‘Table of Contents’ browsing with links to full-text if already subscribed or link to generate request for articles not available online. One can also create alerts for favourite journals. The programme commenced at 2.00 P.M. with participation from Scientific and L & IS professionals of NAL, Raman Research Institute(RRI), Indian Institute of Astrophysics(IIAP), Indian Academy of Science(IASc), Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCR), Centre for Liquid Crystal Research (CLCR). The programme started with a welcome address by Dr. Poornima Narayana, Head, ICAST. She welcomed and briefed about the CSIR journal consortium. While explaining the reasons for subscribing to JCCC, she explained that apart from cost escalation of journals especially the non-availability of ejournals held by M/S Elsevier, one of the most popular and sought after journals were the main causes of concern. Followed by, Dr. Y.M. Patil, Head, Library RRI and Co-ordinator of DST Consortium , briefed the audience about the DST consortium and highlighted the benefits of CSIR & DST Consortium access. Dr. A R Upadhya, Director, NAL, e-launched the product by lighting the e-lamp. Mr. N.V. Satyanarayana, CMD, M/S Informatics Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, the developers of JCCC was overwhelmed by the response of scientist community briefly spoke about the J-Gate and the customized Content being offered through the Consortium. Mr. Shyam Chetty, Chairman Library Advisory Committee & Head, Flight Mechanics Division appreciated the services, support and new initiatives taken by ICAST adding that the scientists are always looking forward to many more such innovative services from ICAST. Dr A.R. Upadhya, Director NAL, in his address showed his concern about escalating prices of journals subscription and how this consortium level approach can solve the problem to some extent. He expressed his contentment about NAL taking a major step in this direction at the initial stage of forming CSIR L & IS Consortium. He hoped that during the 12th five year plan many more high Impact Factor journals including M/S Elsevier’s Science Direct would be given access to. The vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Amit Verma of Informatics. The training session was attended by many scientists and Mr. Ravishankar of Informatics described about all the features of the tool with live examples. He also explained the advantages of creating user accounts and personalizing the tool for the benefit of scientists. Ms. Jayashree S
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Dr. U. N. Sinha, retired on 31st July 2009 after working for 37 years at NAL. Dr. Sinha, the scientist, is very well known in the NAL, CSIR and the Indian scientific circles for his breadth and depth of knowledge, be it in mathematics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, parallel computing, atmospheric science or Sanskrit. Among his strengths are: the number of new ideas he has, constant optimism and boundless energy. He has been a source of inspiration for many of his colleagues and students. I have been fortunate to have been associated with him since 1993 and have learnt a lot. What follows is an account of Dr. Sinha’s career and his contributions to NAL from my perspective. I am sure that a number of his friends who have known him for a longer time will be able to write about many other achievements and aspects of his multi-faceted personality.
