Following a multi-month, SpaceX-organized competition that saw over a thousand applicants from high school and college students all across the world, a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been selected as having presented the best overall design for a Hyperloop pod which will carry dozens of people through a tube at speeds in the range of hundreds of miles per hour.
On its website, the MIT team explains their prototype has one goal: “to demonstrate high-speed, low-drag levitation technology”. The 550-pound pod they submitted is specially designed to accelerate at 2.4G to a maximum speed of 250MPH. Its shell will be made of woven carbon fiber and polycarbonate sheets. With the lowest tube pressure available (140Pa), it’ll have just 2N aerodynamic drag at 110 m/s. The frame will use the relatively simple ladder frame concept, and consist of large welded aluminum rails supporting all of the main internal components.
The MIT pod will use a passive magnetic levitation system that includes two arrays of 20 neodymium magnets. Post liftoff, it’ll maintain a 15mm gap height during cruise stage, and have a peak lift-to-drag ratio of 14.
In terms of efficiency, the lift suspension will be specially designed to reduce system vibrations (it’ll also allow the pod to safely traverse track variations). Additionally, the Hyperloop system will be designed to retract the pod’s skis so as to reduce magnetic drag during low speed operation.
Finally, as far as control, the MIT pod’s lateral control will use passive magnets and active electromagnetic damping to maintain stability and keep the pod centered at all times. When the pod needs to brake, the team has designed a mechanically fail-safe braking system that is single fault tolerant and can decelerate the pod even travelling at 2.4Gs. From this top speed, the brakes dissipate 1.5Mj of kinetic energy.
Now that they won the Hyperloop Pod Competition, actual construction of the prototype will begin this month, with testing scheduled to take place later in April.
Around a hundred or so university teams presented design concepts to a panel of judges this past weekend. Delft University of Technology from The Netherlands finished in second place, while the University of Wisconsin came in third; rounding out the top five was Virginia Tech at fourth and the University of California (Irvine) in fifth.
All of the top teams from this contest will be allowed to test their pods out on the still-under-construction race track near SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California headquarters. Up to 10 additional teams may be added to that list based on additional judging that will take place in the coming weeks.
The idea for a Hyperloop travel system was first introduced by Musk in a White Paper published to the SpaceX website in 2013. In it, he describes a system that transports passengers in aluminum pods as fast as 760MPH along California’s I-5 roadway. At the time, Musk guesstimated the cost for the passenger-only model to be $6 billion, and about $7.5 billion for a bigger model that can transport freight.
As provided by Texas A&M University, the host for this past weekend’s pod design competition, here’s a full list of the winners:
Best Overall Design Award: MIT Hyperloop Team, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Pod Innovation Award: Delft Hyperloop, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands)
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Badgerloop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Hyperloop at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech
Pod Technical Excellence Award: HyperXite, University of California Irvine
Via Phys.org
Advertisement
Learn more about Electronic Products Magazine
