Designed to travel at 1,000mph, Bloodhound SSC is entrepreneur Richard Nobel's next venture into the world of land speed record breaking, building on the success of supersonic car Thrust SSC.
Bloodhound is incredibly powerful, with a 600bhp Menard V12 racing engine merely acting as a pump for the Falcon Project hybrid rocket engine that provides half the vehicle's thrust.
The balance of thrust comes from an engine normally found in a Eurofighter Typhoon: a Eurojet EJ200 turbofan.
However, as team aerodynamicist Ron Ayres has repeatedly pointed out, the main issue in modern land speed record cars is stability, not power. Bloodhound has to stay in contact with the ground, but not plough into it, reach the necessary speed, then safely decelerate its driver to a standstill.
"We have active aerodynamics in the form of wing pitch control front and rear but no active suspension. Wheel loads will be used to check how well we have corrected for the aero forces and the jet thrust," Dr John Davis, senior control systems engineer for Bloodhound, told EW. "The control of the Menard engine will provide some level of control on the rocket engine, the jet will be fully fly-by-wire. We also have power assisted braking and power assisted steering."
Davis, also an aerodynamicist, heads Dragonfly Technology, a racing car control systems consultancy in Northampton.
Failsafe control
Failsafe control over the various parts of Bloodhound comes from a distributed multiprocessor system.
"The control system is based on a PC/104 stack using Diamond Point-supplied Athena II single-board processors and MM32 data acquisition boards," said Davis. "Between the processors will be UDP data packets with normal LAN connections to the outside world where required."
Piston engine fuel pump
The piston engine fuel pump is to be controlled like a racing car engine.
"The V12 will use the normal Pectel electronic control unit, which I will be communicating with to control the engine functions," said Davis. "The control software will be based on the Mathworks-supplied Simulink XPC graphical software, as used by most of the F1 teams."
Overall, there is a balance to be struck between automated and manual control.
"Automation will be where required, but with a top-end pilot-driver in control, he is able to facilitate much himself," said Davis.
Will there be a big red button to press if things start to go wrong?
"There will be various levels of abort, most of which will be driver-initiated, but the control system will check and correct itself where it can and ask the driver to initiate any run aborts, the driver will maintain control at all times."
The electrical system is gradually coming together.
"Much of the hardware has been tested in a simple form, such as the very extensive data collection and storage loop, with the data ring main between the processors being mapped out and tested. There is lots to do, but it is all looking fine at the moment," said Davis.
The Bloodhound team will be showing a model of the car along with one of its EJ200 jet engines at National Electronics Week, which takes place at London's Earls Court 2 on 16-18 June. Richard Noble will also be speaking about the project and its electronics systems at the exhibition.
See also: Electronics Weekly Live, the "How To" exhibition and conference taking place within National Electronics Week this week, 16 - 19 June, Earls Court 2. Themes of the show are: Eco-Design, Embedded processor design, Using Linux, Power-efficient design, Test for embedded systems, Wireless system design.