While the crucial part – the engine – is hoped to be tackled at the air show, the project is also partially handicapped by the lack of adequate transonic (at the speeds close to speed of sound) wind tunnel facilities, Tamilmani said. At present, India has just one such wind tunnel facility – the one belonging to National Aerospace Laboratories off Old Airport Road in Bengaluru.
Wind tunnels are the crucial part of an aircraft development, in which the model of an aircraft is subject to a simulated flight by shooting high-speed winds at the aircraft frame and actually making it fly even as it is actually stationary. With this, engineers can arrive at the best designs and assess the stress that the airframe can endure – crucial in an aircraft design.
The NAL's wind tunnel has the capacity of just 1,500 blow-downs (the high-speed shooting) while our requirement is 11,000 a year. In the absence of meeting such a high demand, we are forced to go abroad to have the aircraft tested," Tamilmani said. The DRDO is currently taking the AMCA design model to Calspan Corporation's transonic wind tunnel, the largest independently-owned wind tunnel in the USA.
However, the disadvantage of doing that, he said, is that "we are taking our details and concepts abroad, that too at our expense." Tamilmani said the government is looking at a land in Telangana to set up a national wind tunnel facility to fill the gap. "In the next five years, we should have the facility," he said, hinting at the urgency of pushing the AMCA project.
The AMCA went into the project definition phase after obtaining the preliminary staff qualitative requirement from the IAF, with whom ADA has undertaken the project.
