“Aeronautical researches are a lengthy affair and are spread over decades. Not only that, the design process that goes through the conceptual, preliminary and detail designing stages involves solid modeling, creation of wind tunnels, trials and tests which increase the cost of the project. IDIOT comes up with the best possible design options of various aircraft components under a given set of working conditions with the help of computer programmes, reducing the cost and time of research,” said Nitin Kumar Gupta, ex-IITian and director of Idea Research. With the core team of two IIT Mumbai pass-outs along with one each from IIT Kharagpur and IIT Chennai, IDIOT was given inputs by Zeus Numerix on grid generation of the aircraft components. “We conducted as many as 450 simulations each lasting for 15-20 hours before reaching the final product,” said Anurag Sharma, an ex-IITian and director of Zeus Numerix.

The group claims that this is the first time such tools have been developed in India. “India depends a lot on foreign organisations for designing such kind of tools. Private manufacturers such as Boeing, MIG or Sukhoi have their own design tools which are designed to match their specific needs. Though the tools have been designed keeping in mind the supersonic aircraft flying at multiple mach (one mach equivalent to speed of sound), they can also be used for designing of all sorts of aeronautical structures such as civil carriers, missile systems or even helicopters. The time of research is reduced to almost one third,” said Dr N Ananthkrishnan, faculty, IIT Bombay.