Texas A&M U. students in the aerospace engineering department have been working to solve one of the front-running problems for the U.S. Navy. In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the desert sand has been eroding helicopter blades.

“This has been a severe problem in recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Ramesh Talreja, aerospace engineering professor.

The Helicoptor Erosion Project addresses the problem in areas of maintenance, design of the blades and develop special coatings to prevent erosion, with the goal of leading to safer operation of helicopters during wars where conditions lead to erosion of blades.

Graduate students Nirmal Sigamani and Sourav Banerjee participated in the 2010 Aircraft Airworthiness and Sustainment conference, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The federal government presented Sigamani and Banerjee with $1,000 stipends to present papers based on their work on helicopter blade erosion.

“Both Nirmal and Sourav worked on the same project, the former dealing with the experimental part. Sourav’s work tackled the difficult task of computer-based modeling of the particle erosion of blade coatings,” said Amine Benzerga, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Banerjee’s adviser. Sigamani received his master’s degree in May, and Banerjee will receive his in fall 2010. Both will begin their doctorate degrees.

“In this conference itself I had a chance to meet so many Aggies working in the top companies and they loved to share their memories [from] Aggieland,” Sigamani said.