SPORT AND LEISURE

One of the earliest projects undertaken by Elston Engineering Services was assisting Bruce Bursford (the holder of the cycling World Time Trial record in August 1999) to reduce the weight of his record-breaking bikes. His early solo bike was provided by Lola and had a frame mass of 4.5kg.

Bruce Bursford with the Trispoke Wheel developed using Finite Element Analysis

 

 

Working with Carbon Fibre Technologies Ltd, we produced a tandem bike with a frame mass of 3.5kg, then went onto reduce the solo frame mass to 1.5kg.  Concurrently we developed an elegant solution for a trispoke wheel with a mass of 0.5kg.  The completed bike was honoured with a Millenium Product Award from the Design Council.  Sadly, the bikes were never exploited commercially due to Bruce Bursford’s untimely death while road training in February 2000.   www.bikebrothers.co.uk/ultimatebike.htm

Later projects included analysis and composite lay up designs for the chassis of the MG Lola LeMans LMP2 car and Lola Formula 3000 car, then the development of Lola’s in-house capability for Finite Element modelling and analysis. In 2008 Lola are fielding the LMP1 and LMP2 coupe’s at LeMans.

 

 

Lola F3000 Test at Barcelona 2001

                                                                                              
Altanet Technology, later called Lola Aylings, developed a new range of rowing boats, for which EES undertook the structural design and analysis of lightweight composite riggers.