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Adtech were approached by a STEM mentor and Bloodhound ambassador from Billericay School in Essex. The project related to the educational aspect of the Bloodhound SSC land speed record attempt.
The project: Rocket car challenge
The rocket car challenge was initiated by the Bloodhound team and the cars use commercially available rockets – usually used for vertical rockets and available from hobby shops. The cars can be made of anything, they run down a steel wire and the only rules are the car must have 4 wheels on the ground and do a return run within 1 hour.
There are different rocket ‘classes’ – the current world record is 533 mph for the unlimited class! As speeds have got so high, the emphasis now is to get the highest speed for a particular rocket size.
In Essex they have standardised on a B6 rocket, with a 50-metre cable and with a 2-metre timing gate at 25 metres. There are about 6 schools competing with mainly year 8 to year 10 students aged between 11 and 14. Each school has an engineering mentor and it’s very competitive!
The solution: PTFE tubing for rocket car bearings
The B6 rocket motors weigh about 16 grams and produce around 6N thrust so every gram of weight is a problem. Hence the idea of simple PTFE bearings instead of small ball races. The bearings will be made from PTFE tube 1/8″ ID x 1/4″ OD.
The results: Speed of 150 mph
Although Billericay school didn’t win the challenge, these hand made rocket cars got up to 150 miles per hour! Some young engineers in the making.
The image shows the PTFE components that were made from Adtech’s standard metric stock PTFE tubing with 1/8″ ID x 1/4″ OD.
