Ron Ayers

JCB DIESELMAX Project Aerodynamicist

The man behind the successful Bristol Siddeley Bloodhound missile, Ron Ayers came into the national consciousness in 1994 when he conducted the arduous aerodynamic test programme for ThrustSSC. The project was only able to proceed after Ayers simultaneously conducted two separate aerodynamic investigations – one via computational fluid dynamics, the other with empirical full-scale speed testing of a model on a rocket railway – and was able to correlate the findings from the two so closely that he felt confident a supersonic programme could safely be achieved.

One of Ayers’ personal projects has been an intensive investigation of why a number of land speed record cars which have run at the Bonneville Salt Flats have apparently underperformed, given their various performance parameters. It is this study that, together with his CFD investigation, that has proved invaluable in the development of the JCB H1 project.