A team from Bournemouth University and the National Motor Museum will be breathing new life into Sunbeam to try to make it run for the first time in over half a century. The legendary Sunbeam 1000hp broke the 200mph Land Speed Record on 29th March 1927 and now the team plans to start it back up again.
Students from the engineering programme started working on various projects with the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in June 2021. The Sunbeam project is led by Dr Adil Saeed & Dr Sarah Palmer-Smith alongside final year Mechanical Engineering students to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the land speed record.
Dr Adil Saeed Programme Leader for the engineering programmes, said: “Working on the Sunbeam 1000hp has created many exciting opportunities for our students to take their learning and research and put it into practice, to contribute to new knowledge creation, knowledge exchange and students as researcher initiatives.
“Our work on Sunbeam started in July 2021 with the core objectives to identify, measure, and analyse structural failures within Sunbeam which pose significant risks to its structural integrity utilising non-invasive ultrasonic techniques.
“The continuation of this work via our final year students means that this is a rare opportunity for us to carry on working on this British Icon. This project goes a long way to achieve BU's vision to be part of the community around us and to engage our students in activities aimed at providing solutions to the real-world problems and informing the education we deliver.
“Furthermore, it will help us to achieve BU's goal for our students to be a key part of the research we conduct, co-create knowledge with BU and play a crucial role in everything we do.”
For more information about Bournemouth University’s Design and Engineering courses, please visit the course pages of the BU website.
