Midland engineering is playing a major part the push to set a new land speed record. Graeme Brown looks at the progress of the Bloodhound project.
Engineering firms in the West Midlands are helping to push new boundaries as ambitious plans to break the world land speed record come closer to fruition.
Dozens of firms from the region are among a group of companies behind Bloodhound SuperSonic Car project which aims to break the 1,000mph barrier for the first time.
The project has taken a major step forward this winter, after its rocket was successfully tested, and the intricate nature of the engineering process has seen expert companies from the region called in.
Their tasks vary widely – from ensuring a 12-mile strip of desert is flat to within 2cm, to supplying as near perfect aluminium as possible for the chassis.
The team aims to surpass the current land speed record of 763mph by a huge margin. The potential speed of the Bloodhound would see it cover the length of four-and-a-half football pitches in one second and travel faster than a bullet.
Before the attempt in South Africa desert next year, some very precise work has to take place to ensure the safety of driver Wing Commander Andy Green.
That is where Hexagon Metrology comes in. The Telford firm is carrying out a series of precise measurements for the project – from ensuring components are the right sizes to tolerances of less than the width of a human hair to measuring the desert to ensure it is sufficiently flat.
Sales manager Jon Kimber said: “The car has to go in a straight line. If the fin is twisted then it could be a huge issue as it would create drag and veer off course.
“They have spent a lot of money making sure that the car can go 1,000 miles and hour, so they have to do things like this to make sure.”
The firm, which employs 85 people in the UK, has to take account of temperature in its measurements – which can cause metals to expand – as well as other variables like pressure, humidity, vibration and surface finishes.
In terms of the exterior of the car, Mr Kimber said he would be hopeful the company could measure it to a tolerance of 1mm.
Mr Kimber added: “Some of the parts we are measuring, like the components that hold the suspension in place, let’s say the hole is 60mm, we would be measuring to a tolerance of 20 microns, and a human hair is 40 microns.
“We have machines that can measure down to two microns.”
The Bloodhound weighs more than seven tonnes and the engines produce more than 135,000 horsepower – more than six times the power of all the Formula 1 cars on a starting grid put together.
The vehicle is a mix of car and aircraft technology, with the front half made of carbon fibre like a racing car and the back half made of a metallic framework and panels like an aircraft.
The Post reported last year that Brierley Hill-based Hampson Industries had been chosen to create much of the chassis for the car, which will generate more brake horse power than 200 Bugatti Veyron supercars.
Worcester-based Andrews Precision, Warwickshire business FactoryMaster and Coventry firm Faro are also among the suppliers.
Elsewhere, Metalweb is supplying aluminium that is being used to make the wheels for the vehicle.
The Nechells company, which employs more than 100 people across four UK sites, will cut it using high pressure water – strong enough to cut through metal five inches thick.
Sales director Mark Benfield said: “We are supplying high tech, high strength aluminium.
“The wheels are going to be running at about 10,500rpm so you can imagine it is going to have to be very strong, and it has to be exactly what it says on the tin.
“When you are travelling at more than 1,000mph, clearly in terms of engineering you are breaking a lot of new ground and the demands on the materials are being taken to new boundaries.”
He added: “The metal has to undergo a full chemical analysis. It is an aluminium alloy, which has got a lot of high-strength characteristics.
“It is an alloy that is extensively used in the aerospace industry, for example in the wings on aircraft.”
Bloodhound will use three engines to hit the 1,000mph mark. Its main power plants will be a Eurofighter-Typhoon engine and the hybrid rocket. But the vehicle also incorporates a Cosworth F1 V8 engine – purely to push a liquid oxidiser into the rocket’s fuel chamber.
It will achieve this by driving a high-performance pump, which is actually an updated version of a unit that was used on the UK’s old nuclear cruise missiles.
Engineers have the complex task of getting the rocket, the F1-CA2010 engine, and its missile pump to all work in perfect unison.
Kidderminster-based Amada is supplying sheet metal for the vehicle.
Technical consultant manager Matt Wood said: “We are making various sheet metal parts for them. We have made a few covers and side panels and floor panels – a lot of the sheet metal work. The properties of the metal have been specified by Bloodhound. It is titanium with a special form of steel that was supplied to us.”
Amada, which employs 140 people in the UK, specialises in machines for firms involved with sheet metal but the need for precision led the Bloodhound team directly to the source.
Mr Wood said: “Our machinery is used across the Midlands in anything that uses sheet metal. Anything from a one or two-man band to a multinational company and everything from automotive to telecommunications and lighting.”
He added: “We got involved through a customer, Hampson Aerospace. They have got some of our machinery and one of the guys on the project got in touch and asked if we wanted to get involved.
“It is a great thing to be involved with from a prestige point of view.”
Bloodhound is essentially the same team that claimed the land speed record for Britain in 1997.
RAF fighter pilot Wing Commander Green – who became the first driver to break the sound barrier in a car called Thrust SSC at Black Rock Desert in the US – will travel 500ft in the blink of an eye if plans come to fruition.
As with Thrust, the project is headed by Richard Noble, with Ron Ayers acting as the chief aero engineer.
It was launched as an education initiative to spur children’s interest in Stem subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
More than 5,000 schools are using the example of Bloodhound and the science of fast cars to enliven their classroom studies.
The latest milestone reached by the Bloodhound team was in October when it successfully tested its unique hybrid rocket system for the first time.
At 12 feet, 18 inches in diameter and 992lbs in weight, the rocket was the largest of its kind ever designed in Europe and the biggest to be fired in the UK for 20 years.
The successful test saw the rocket burned for 10 seconds, generating 14,000lbs of thrust and creating 185 decibels of sound – many times that of a Boeing 747 at take off.
Bloodhound’s engineers are now reviewing the data from the experiment – enough to fill a telephone directory – to further develop the system.
Bloodhound in numbers
Length: 44.2ft
Height: 9.8ft
Wheel diameter: 36 inches
Turning radius: 394ft
Car Mass (fully fuelled): 17,165 lb
Design speed: 1,050 mph – or 469 miles per second
0-1,000 mph: 42 seconds
Wheels RPM: 10,000
Length of track: 12 miles
Current record: 763 mph
Quick history of the Land Speed Record
The battle to be the fastest thing in contact with the ground has raged since well before the turn of the 20th century.
In the beginning, the contest was between different types of propulsion. First electricity and then steam fought it out, then came the internal combustion automobile engine.
That fell victim to its much more powerful aeronautical counterpart, before that, too, was consigned to the pages of history by turbojet and rocket engines.
At the turn of the 20th century Count Chasseloup-Laubat and Camile Jenatzy fought a duel in their respective electric cars, resulting in the latter reaching 65.79mph. Then came Leon Serpollet’s 75.06mph in a steam-powered car of his own design in April 1902.
In the 1920s, race drivers Henry Segrave, Malcolm Campbell, Parry Thomas and Kaye Don fought for British honour with US rivals Ray Keech and Frank Lockhart, edging the record to Segrave’s 231.44 mph with Golden Arrow in March 1929.
The early 1930s belonged to Campbell. Thomas was dead, killed at Pendine Sands in 1927 and Segrave had died on Windermere in June 1930.
Campbell pushed his own mark ever upward with his famous Bluebird, leaving it at 301.129mph in September 1935.
Thereafter fellow race drivers George Eyston and John Cobb, with Thunderbolt and Railton Special respectively, set three records apiece. On Cobb’s last, 394.20mph in September 1947, one run yielded an average speed of 403mph, the first time 400mph had been attained on land.
The greatest gathering of contenders, at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 1960, saw American Athol Graham killed, Art Arfons and Dr Nathan Ostich fail and Campbell’s son Donald, the sole Brit involved, crash his turbine-engined Bluebird at 325mph.
However, Campbell returned to set a new wheel-driven record of 403.1mph in July 1964 before the record was pushed to 600.601mph by November 1965.
The rocket era was ushered in in October 1970, when Gary Gabelich’s set the record at 622.407mph.
Then 13 years later, Richard Noble’s Thrust2 regained the record for Britain at 633.468mph on October 1983, and there things settled until his ThrustSSC, driven by Andy Green, reached 714.144mph in September 1997.
That was just a prelude, however, for on October 15 Green became the first man ever to exceed the speed of sound at ground level, at 763.035mph. He remains the only supersonic driver in history.
