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.