The Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) held a National Seminar on Inflatable Structures and Lightweight Materials: A new era of Space and Defence Applications (ISLMSDA 2022) at the Department Auditorium.
The seminar was a two-day event, starting from 29 September to 30 September, 2022. The aim of the seminar was to build awareness for inflatable structures and lightweight materials, their design, production technologies, and specific application areas among young academicians, engineers, and industrialists.
Participation by experts from academic institutions like IITs, NITs, and research organizations like ISRO, TIFR, DRDO, NAL, and several private industries were present. Points covered in the Seminar, included applications of inflatable structures in ground and space environments, materials for space and ground-based inflatable structures, qualification for a space environment and tests for the inflatable system, and folding and deployment of membrane structures, among other topics. Talks on inflatable structure design, analysis, manufacturing, lightweight materials, and testing were delivered.
Hari Babu Srivastava, Director General (Technology Management and System Analysis and Modeling), DRDO, was the Chief Guest in a seminar on “Inflatable Structures and Lightweight Materials” organised by IIT Roorkee during 29-30 September 2022. He congratulated the Director, faculty, research fellows and students of IIT Roorkee on attaining a landmark of 175 years in the academic journey of the Institute.
H B Srivastava said, “The applications of inflatable structures and materials in the field of Space, Aeronautics, Defence, Natural Disasters, and other engineering and commercial areas. He highlighted the application of inflatable structures for the defence forces such as paratrooping of men and material, quickly deployable structures for intensive patient care, enhancement of muscle strength of soldiers etc."
Professor Ajit K Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, "Today, India is among the top players with more than 500 small, medium and large-scale industries contributing to its space programmes in the form of design, engineering and fabrication of hardware."
