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Raj Chengappa

21 UP

LCA's Spin-offs

Even before Wing Commander Rajiv Kothiyal piloted the historic maiden flight of India's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), I put it through its paces the previous day and crashed it - in a state-of-the-art simulator at the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) in Bangalore. While media attention focused on whether the LCA would ever be inducted into the air force - and rightly so - few acknowledged the tremendous technological advances that had been made during its development.

ADA, the nodal agency which coordinated 64 public and private institutions involved in the making of the LCA, has developed a virtual prototyping software called Prana that is on a par with some of the best in its class. In an innocuous PWD structure, outside ADA's circular headquarters is a review room where the software is constantly being used by scientists and engineers to do things like refining future airframes that would be fitted on the LCA or to design shop floors for production of the aircraft.

It is like entering a future zone. You slip on the Crystal Eyes- - a spectacle to view images in 3D and with the click of your mouse you can walk into any section of the aircraft when it is projected, visually inspecting every cable or rivet without ever having to strip it. Dr T.G. Pai, an IIT graduate and LCA's project director for technology development, who headed the team that developed the software, told me that with the software they were able to cut development time by almost a year. The software is now much in demand in other research laboratories. Even the armed forces used it to simulate Kargil terrain during the war so that pilots could have a visual feel of the terrain.

Not far from ADA in the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) amidst leafy green surroundings is another of India+s unsung hi-tech units that have come up in the LCA's wake. In a drab factory floor LCA's structures made of advanced composites are strewn all over the place. At least 40 per cent of LCA's airframe is made of such material making the aircraft saving almost a tonne or 20 per cent of its total weight. Apart from that in areas such as wing skins that have over 600 rivets or joints, carbon composites allow these to be cast as a single piece. This increases its reliability enormously and cuts down on maintenance.

In an innovative departure M.Subba Rao, the chief of the unit, is using Indus technology to make the composite moulds. He has employed skilled potters to cast the moulds in plaster of Paris. He also believes that composites allow designers to copy nature's way of creating matter through accretion of layers rather than scooping out material as is done in parts using metals. The advanced composite unit is now coming in handy not only for making passenger aircraft that NAL is designing but also in a range of other consumer products including tennis racquets and crutches.

There is another major spin off --- the mountains of confidence India's aeronautical engineers have gained while developing the LCA. Before the LCA came in there was a hiatus of close to 30 years in aeronautical development. Much of LCA's debilitating slippages and cost overruns were caused by the need to set up infrastructure from scratch. Even after the first flight there is plenty to do, including validating such crucial parameters as its maneuverability, rate of climb and acceleration which the Air Force needs. But if the team remains as motivated and speeds up the pace, they are certain to prove the critics wrong. Any takers?

(Raj Chengappa is Deputy Editor, INDIA TODAY and author of Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India's Quest to be a Nuclear Power.) He is based in Delhi. Write to Raj Chengappa.)

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