Engineering news
After eight years in the making, the Bloodhound 1,000mph supersonic car will be unveiled for the first time later today ahead of next year's attempt on the world land-speed record.
The completed 13.5m vehicle, which will use jet and rocket motors to produce 135,000 thrust hp, will be on display at Canary Wharf in London.
The car will be shown in record attempt configuration, with its 2m high tail fin, required for stability at high speed, in place for the first time.
Carbon fibre panels have been partially removed on one side in order to show the technology inside the car, including the Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine and supercharged Jaguar V8 engine used to pump oxidizer into the Swedish built Nammo rocket.
The finished cockpit - a huge and complex monocoque crafted from multiple layers of carbon fibre to produce to create a strong yet lightweight safety-cell, will also be on display.
The car features three separate braking systems, seven fire extinguishers and 500 sensors, twice as many as a Formula One car, so engineers will know exactly how it is performing during each high speed run.
Castrol is providing a number of high tech lubricants including a specially blended engine oil. Custom-made Rolex instruments provide another layer of redundancy: should the digital read-outs fail, driver Andy Green will use these clocks to time the release of the car’s parachutes and when to apply the wheel brakes. If he brings them in too soon, at speeds above 250mph, for example, they could burst into flames.
The Bloodhound project began in 2008, with project director Richard Noble at the helm. Education has been a major part of its remit. Bloodhound ambassadors have visited several hundred schools to drum up interest in science and engineering.
Noble said: “Public interest in the project is incredible and thanks to the generous support of our partners we are delighted to able to bring the Bloodhound supersonic car to London and put it on show. With the car now built and the track in South Africa prepared our focus is on racing in 2016. That part of the adventure starts with runway tests at Newquay Aerohub next Easter.”
Bloodhound, which is backed by the IMechE, has also been supported by thousands of individual sponsors whose names will be embossed on the tail fin.
Philippa Oldham, IMechE head of transport and manufacturing, said: “The UK is facing an engineering skills shortage and we need projects like Bloodhound SSC to inspire a new generation of engineers and scientists about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths subjects.
“The project is also UK engineering cutting-edge and the open access nature of the project means that the advances made to develop this car could potentially be used in a myriad of different applications and by different industries.”
Bloodhound has been an open access project, with all of its engineering data and drawings available for free access on the bloodhoundssc.com website.
Bloodhound Facts
- Bloodhound’s wheels spin at 10,200rpm, 170 times per second. They generate 50,000 radial G.A.
- BLOODHOUND will run on the Hakskeen Pan, South Africa. This is an alkali plays, essentially a dried up lake bed.
- A team of 317 locals were employed to clear the desert, they shifted 15,800 tonnes of stones by hand, from a 22 million square metres, the equivalent of a two-lane road from Bristol to Moscow.
- For 2016 / 1,000mph runs the Bloodhound will be fitted with three hybrid rockets, which combined with the EJ200 from a Eurofighter Typhoon will produce 135,000 thrust horse power – equal to 180 F1 cars.
- Bloodhound will decelerate from 1,000mph at 3G.
- Bloodhound will go from zero to 1,000mph in 55 seconds and back to zero again in a further 65 seconds, covering 12 miles.
- The EJ200 jet engine consumes 64,000 litres of air per second, it would suck all the air from an average sized house in 3 seconds.