BIT space dept now part of ISRO RLV project

Ranchi: Birla Institute of Technology (BIT) Mesra has made a significant contribution towards the research and development activities of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), which was successfully tested by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR), Chitradurga, Karnataka on Sunday morning.
ISRO did the drop test of the RLV from a height of 4.5km. This experiment would help develop reusable vehicles for space missions.
Professor in-charge, BIT Mesra, Priyank Kumar said BIT’s department of space engineering and rocketry had received a sponsored project from ISRO in 2020 on the aerodynamic characteristics investigation of the RLV landing at low speeds adding data collected from the ongoing project have been handed over to ISRO. “The project is worth ₹24 lakh,” he said.
According to Kumar, the institute carried out wind tunnel experiments on the scaled-down model of the RLV at a maximum wind speed of around 125 kmph to study its impact on the vehicle. “Computational studies were conducted at even higher velocities of 300 kmph. The effects of landing gears during the course of landing and touchdown have been also studied,” he said. The wind tunnel models and its accessories were prepared using 3D printers available in the All India Council for Technical Education sponsored IDEA Lab at BIT Mesra.
Principal investigator of the project, Dr Kumar said, “More experiments and computational studies will be carried out in future for validation and improvement in the aerodynamic efficiency of the model.”