Bircham Newton plays host to tunnelling trials for boring students
The Constructionarium at Bircham Newton has played host to a team hoping to scoop a tunnelling competition organised by billionaire Tesla chief Elon Musk in Los Angeles next month.
Constructionarium Ltd is hosting tunnelling trials at its 19-acre site, which provides similar soil types that the tunnel boring machine will be encountering during the finals.
Julia Stevens, chief executive said: “Constructionarium is delighted to be involved with this exciting project by providing a testing ground to enable final calibrations and preparations to be made.
"Alongside our traditional learning, our bespoke facility provides a great testing ground to help prove, test and showcase innovative built environment ideas and prototypes.
"The group is extremely talented and they have worked hard to develop a concept which we are looking forward to seeing come alive in North Norfolk.”
A team of students called the Warwick Boring Team are heading to LA later this month to compete in Elon Musk’s Boring Company’s tunnelling competition. They will build their tunnelling machine and test it against global competitors to win the top spot.
The group of 30 students from the University of Warwick have been working on the innovative tunnelling technology called the Boring Machine to make transport greener, cheaper and faster.
Warwick Boring were shortlisted as one of just eight teams out of nearly 400 applicants and are the UK’s only competitor.
Sanzhar Taizhan, founder and co-project lead at Warwick Boring said: "We are very much looking forward to seeing the TBM trialling next month at Constructionarium and seeing theory put into practice. Anyone who is interested to support our team, please, feel free to reach out to us. We still have our crowdfunding campaign open on our website.”