Produced By- Dave White. Head of D&T Clevedon School

What is Bloodhound SSC? Bloodhound SSC is the name of a project aiming to break the land speed record with a

car powered by a jet engine and a rocket. It is designed to reach approximately 1,000 miles per hour (1,609 km/h). It is being

developed and built with the intention of breaking the land speed record by the largest ever margin.

If funding is obtained the construction should be complete by the end of 2011 and the record attempts may happen in late 2011 early 2012

Bloodhound SSC/RapMan Projects

This Teaching and Learning resource is intended to give you a few ideas for 3D printing projects based on the Bloodhound SSC car. Some are cross curricular and can involve different subjects. The following list highlights some of the project ideas.

Design and make your own Bloodhound car- rocket, CO2 or balloon powered

3D terrain mapping… find an area flat enough to drive a car at 1000mph… and print a map of it

Ergonomics… design controls that “fit” the driver

Design you own Bloodhound SSC

OK, so designing and making a 1000mph car would cost you about £10 million… Not the sort of cash you are likely to carry around with you! So making a real car is probably a little unrealistic.

Why not design and model your own Bloodhound?

On the next page are lots of images of the real car, perhaps you could base your design on these or even try to design your own from scratch. You can use any 3D CAD program as long as you are able to export in .stl format.

Use a 3D printer to 3D print your model Have a look here for ideas and a design game

http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education.cfm?cit_id=4384

Bloodhound SSC

Images from http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/media/car_images.cfm

A mini Bloodhound SSC

If you are feeling a bit more adventurous the why not try making a mini Bloodhound powered by a real rocket motor.

Some parts for the car such as the wheels, fins or tails can be made with a 3D printer… could these modifications add to the performance of the mini Bloodhound?

See this webpage for more information http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education/education_news.cfm?widCall1=customWidgets.contentItem_show_1&cit_id=4464

F1 in Schools Bloodhound

If you fancy going a little further in the designing and making of a mini bloodhound SSC then you could consider taking part in the F1 in schools competition. There is a special Bloodhound category and details can be found here http://www.f1inschools.co.uk/

The bloodhound category has been developed based on the concept of the World Land Speed Record rules and regulations - as few rules as possible… so there is ample opportunity to design and make parts for your design using a 3D printer.

The current UK record (as of November 2010) is 0.620s to cover the 20m track (32.25m/s or 116.1kph or 72.14mph)

Rules and regulations can be downloaded here http://www.f1inschools.co.uk/media/page_content/Rules%20/BloodRegsNEWUK.pdf

Front wing for a F1 in Schools car made with 3D printer.

A balloon powered Bloodhound

Building the rocket powered bloodhound is probably only suitable for older students but there are opportunities for younger students to get involved too… balloon power!!

A simple card chassis with some wheels and a balloon is all that is needed… and why not partner primary and secondary schools to print wheels of your own design using a RapMan.

Some lesson ideas and templates are available on the Bloodhound SSC website http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education.cfm?cit_id=4470 (registration is required).

And what about those wheels…. Here are some ideas of wheels printed using a RapMan 3D printer.

Flat as a pancake… You can’t drive at 1000mph on a motorway, so where would you find a suitable

place for a record attempt? The requirements for a location to drive at this sort of speed are… 1. Flat ground 2. Smooth surface 3. Large area 4. Reliable surface dry-out period. 5. Access from road network. 6. Security. 7. Potential for publicity and constructive competition…. So, how do you find the right location?

There is a lesson guide about using

Google Earth to find suitable locations on the Bloodhound SSC website http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education.cfm?cit_id=4476 (registration is needed)

But why not go one step further … how about printing a 3D model of the locations using a 3D printer.

A full guide to using digital height data from satellites or the NASA Shuttle program can be found in the geography resources

Hakskeen Pan, Mier Rural, South Africa. The chosen location for the record attempt.

Get a grip… I’m pretty certain that Wing Commander Andy Green, the driver of Bloodhound SSC will not want

to make a slip when steering at 1000mph. Flicking a wrong switch or pressing the wrong button might not be too clever either. So designing ergonomic controls is pretty important.

Designing hand grips, non slip switches, buttons etc is a project where students can use anthropometric data gathered from primary or secondary sources to design these controls.

Using software such as Pro/ENGINEER a simple starting shape can be sculpted using features such as warp, bend or spline to model the controls. The designs can then be printed in 3D using a RapMan or BfB3000 printer to test them out.

More information on the design of Bloodhound controls can be found here http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/news/latest_news.cfm?widCall1=customWidgets.contentItem_show_1&cit_id=4717

And here http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/car/cockpit_instruments/part_3_the_bloodhound_driving_experience.cfm

Information about the design of the steering wheel is here http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/news/latest_news.cfm?widCall1=customWidgets.contentItem_show_1&cit_id=4673

A whole lot of thrust About half of the thrust of Bloodhound SSC is

provided by a EUROJET EJ200, a highly sophisticated military turbofan normally found in the engine bay of a Eurofighter Typhoon.

Obviously the design of the fans and turbines is critically important, so why not design and 3D print some different designs to test and compare their efficiency?

There is a Teaching and Learning resource about turbines on the BfB wiki that can be easily adapted to testing the thrust that can be generated (the original project is about measuring electricity generated by wind turbines). See the turbines project.

More information about measuring thrust can be found here http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/education.cfm?cit_id=4786 (registration required)

Where can I get more information?

The official website for Bloodhound SSC is http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/

University of Swansea’s Bloodhound site http://www.bloodhoundssc.swan.ac.uk/

University of the West of England’s Bloodhound site http://www.uwe.ac.uk/aboutUWE/bloodhound/index.shtml

Credits

Thanks to the following for the use of pictures, text resources and ideas for this Teaching and learning resource.

Bloodhound SSC http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/

Google Earth http://earth.google.co.uk/ and Google Maps http://maps.google.co.uk/

Bits from Bytes Ltd http://bitsfrombytes.com/

Cubify http://cubify.com/

Apologies to anyone I’ve missed