Kieron Bradley and the CIV
Lotus F1 engineer Kieron Bradley takes us around the Concept Ice Vehicle, explaining that it’s still very much a work in development vehicle. First up is the interior of the cockpit. ‘Here, you’ve got the usual controls,’ he explains, ‘You’ve got the ignition, you’ve got the fuel pump, and then you’ve got the fuel heater. On the left, you’ve got the throttle. Move the lever into position and you’re at full throttle. On the other side, you’ve got the pitch of the blades – you just move the prop forward – and back.’
Moving around the front of the CIV, Kieron demonstrates how the propellers move, ‘All the blades on the propeller rotate. The prop is a bit like your gearbox on the car; you alter the pitch one way and you’re in fifth gear; move it this way, and we’re in about first. So you’d start off at about this pitch [showing a slight angle] and as speed increases, we’d move the lever forward and we’d flatten out the blades. Lowers the engine revs, better fuel economy, less work done by the engine.’
The engine sits on the outside of the cockpit. ‘We’ve got a BMW engine – a good, solid reliable lump. Revs at 7250rpm. It’s got a supercharger unit, which basically compresses the air into the engine. The more air you can get into the engine, the more fuel you can burn. You can’t do one without the other,’ says Kieron.
Then it’s time to examine the skis: ‘At the front, we’ve got the suspension. It all moves via this pin here. This pivots, just like your normal suspension, the arms go up and down, all the load is taken by the shock. Inside the skis you have tortren blocks – big rubber blocks, in other words – because as the skis go up and down, they need some form of resistance, and little bit of lateral movement. They need something just to take that out of the ski.
‘The armour plating underneath is aluminium – rivited and bonded, because it there’s any cracking, you’ll lose the components and they’re going to go into the prop and we’re going to get ‘prop strike’.
‘The two side arms do take a horrendous amount of load. They’re also aluminium. They’re welded and they’ve been heat-treated – they’re about as flawless as you can get. As the bump hits the front of ski, the load is transmitted this way; suspension goes up, push-rod goes in, and that acts as a spring and dampener. We’ve got the brake unit at the bottom here. On the snow, it’s not particularly effective, but that’s not really what we’re worried about. There’s actually one region of the Pole where we have to go down an ice shelf, and we need some way to stop it… This [points to brake unit] actually deploys downwards, and these are tungsten carbide spikes – and they are sharp – and they’ll dig into the ice, and they’ll just slow the machine down.’
