DERBY'S Rolls-Royce has played a key role in the development of a supersonic car which aims to smash the world land speed record.
The aero engine-maker, which is a major backer of the Bloodhound SSC (supersonic car) project, gave the engineering team the use of its engine testing facility for a "spin test".
The test, which took place at a test bed at Rolls-Royce's civil aerospace site at Sinfin, involved the first of the four wheels that the Bloodhound team hope will carry the car to the record.
During the test, the wheel reached a speed of 1,100mph, achieving 10,429 revolutions a minute – or 174 times a second.
The Bloodhound car is being designed and built in the UK with the help of a team of British Army soldiers from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.
The project, which launched in 2008, aims to inspire engineers of the future through its education programme, with more than 5,600 schools signed up to use resources developed to run alongside the project.
The team is well on with building the car and is on track to have it ready for low-speed testing – low speed being up to 200mph – in Cornwall next summer.
The car will then fly out to South Africa next autumn to start its bid for the land speed record on the Hakskeen Pan, a dried out lake bed, which the team chose as the best, flattest location on which to break the 1,000mph barrier.
Bloodhound has described the spin test at Rolls-Royce as a "huge milestone" in the development of the car.
In a statement, the Bloodhound team said: "Test results were satisfyingly similar to the predictions that the Bloodhound engineers had calculated using their Hyperworks computer simulation software.
"The test rig is normally operated in a vacuum but engineers wanted to expose the wheel to the sort of environment that it will see when racing across the Hakskeen Pan.
"At one point, the friction of the air against the surface of the wheel saw its temperature rise at an alarming 1C per second, which peaked at 96C."
Bloodhound said it will now use the data collected from the test to fine-tune its wheel designs.
Current record-holder Wing Commander Andy Green will drive during the Bloodhound attempt.
Rolls-Royce is bringing both financial and technical support to the project, including overseeing the supercar's EJ200 jet engine.
The engine, which is built by Rolls-Royce in Bristol, is normally found in a Eurofighter-Typhoon.
The car also contains lightweight composite parts designed and supplied by Heanor firm Cytec, formerly Umeco.