National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) is a part of the Council
of
Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India's civil
R&D establishment in aeronautics and allied disciplines. NAL
was established at Delhi in 1959 and moved to Bangalore in 1960
with a primary objective to develop aerospace technologies with
strong science content and with a view to design and construct
flight vehicles. Coupled with its objective was the use of its
aerospace technology base for general industrial applications.
NAL's core competence spans practically the whole aerospace
spectrum. Over the years, NAL has made significant contributions
to all Indian aerospace programmes including the setting up
of a national agenda for such programmes. During the last decade,
NAL has spearheaded the effort to design and develop  small
and medium-sized aircraft for the civil sector. NAL's real strength
lies in its vast reservoir of expertise and facilities created
over the years. With this imposing infrastructure, NAL has been
very successful in obtaining a large number of R&D contracts
for testing and subsystem development for various national programmes,
as well as industries all over India and abroad. In the past
decade (1987-97), NAL undertook approximately 400 projects worth
about USD 60 million.
Facilities at NAL:
Trisonic wind tunnel testing of aircraft, launch vehicles
and other spacecraft.
Acoustic testing of satellites and launch vehicles.
Full-scale 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.
Facilities and multi-disciplinary expertise, developed primarily
for the aerospace sector, are also utilised in other sectors
involving high technology. NAL is recognised as a centre for
failure analysis and extends its support in investigating
failures and accidents both for aerospace and other general
facilities. Other major facilities at NAL include the acoustic
test facility, turbo machinery and combustion research facilities,
Composite Structures Laboratory, black box readout systems
and the FRP fabrication facility.
NAL has a staff strength of about 1300 of which about 350
are full-fledged R&D professionals. There are over 100 PhD
holders on the staff.
Some major recent contracts: Development of carbon
fibre composite wings for India's Light Combat Aircraft
(LCA) programme, design, development and fabrication of
a fully-automated autoclave for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
(HAL), development of co-cured fin and rudder for LCA and
a shake test facility for HAL's Advanced Light Helicopter
(ALH). NAL has also undertaken about a dozen international
projects for Boeing (USA), Civil Aviation Authority (UK),
IBM Corporation (USA), Hitachi of Japan and others.
NAL has NALTech as its commercial arm. NALTech was set up
early in 1993 when NAL was to venture out aggressively, both
in the national and international market, to promote its expertise,
technologies and facilities.
NAL has come a long way from its modest beginnings; when it
was housed for some time in the stables of a former Maharaja's
palace in Bangalore. This development was possible because
of the vision and commitment of its former Directors like
Dr P Nilakantan, Dr S R Valluri, Prof R Narasimha and Dr K
N Raju.
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