The BLOODHOUND Supersonic Car, launched by Richard Noble and Andy Green in October 2008, is set to take the Land Speed Record into a whole new speed regime. The team, including researchers from Swansea University, plans to take a manned vehicle to 1000mph by 2018, increasing the current Land Speed Record (763mph) by over 30%.

This target presents the team with massive scientific and engineering challenges, not least of which being how the car will stay attached to the ground at such speeds!

The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) research team at The College of Engineering at Swansea University has been working on answering these questions, and predicting the overall aerodynamic behaviour of the vehicle.

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers (Oxfordshire Automotive Division) and the University of Oxford e-Research Centre is pleased to invite Dr Ben Evans, Senior Lecturer at the University of Swansea, to give this exciting talk on the aerodynamics of the Bloodhound SSC project. He will discuss the extreme challenges of designing a car to reach 1000mph. Dr Evans will discuss the aerodynamic work he and his colleagues undertook as well as discussing the overall project.

High Performance Computing was used as an integral component of the design and optimization cycles for the vehicle. In order to achieve the final design predicted lift and drag responses over 14 full vehicle design iterations were carried out and numerous sub-assembly optimization studies.

The design work on this vehicle has inspired the development of novel methods for simulating high speed particle entrainment, mesh-based optimization and CFD data visualization. At the time of writing the BLOODHOUND SSC is being built, with testing due to commence in 2017.