Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

For all the hyperloop hype, there are few details regarding how a magnetic levitation, pod-hurtling super track will achieve the proposed goal of 700-mph transportation. But Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), one of the big players in the hyperloop race, just announced some of the specifics when it comes to vacuum-sealed maglev transportation.

Instead of using the same magnetic levitation technology that you'd find on high-speed trains in Europe and Japan, HTT announced today that it has licensed a technology called "passive magnetic levitation." Unlike traditional maglev, passive magnetic levitation would not require that you supply power to the rails, but instead uses unpowered coils of wire on the track and a magnetic system on the pod combined with linear induction motors to achieve high-speed travel.

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HTT claims that passive magnetic levitation would be more cost effective and safer than traditional maglev. "Utilizing a passive levitation system will eliminate the need for power stations along the hyperloop track, which makes this system the most suitable for the application and will keep construction costs low," Bibop Gresta, COO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies said in a press release. "From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground."

One of the main differences between passive magnetic levitation and traditional maglev is that movement is required to achieve levitation in the passive system. The technology, developed in 2000 by Richard Post of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, does not use powered electromagnets or superconducting magnets. You can read the technical details of passive magnetic levitation, which Post called Inductrack, in this January 2000 article he wrote for Scientific American.

Because movement is required to achieve levitation, HTT plans to use linear motors to produce thrust and get the pods moving from resting position. Once the pods accelerate to about 20 mph, a magnetic field would generate between the unpowered coils in the track and magnet arrays on the pod, levitating the vehicles as they continue to accelerate down the track. Additional thrust acceleration would bring them up to a cruising speed of 760 mph. To slow down, HTT plans to simply fire reverse thrusters and use a regenerative braking system to help recharge the batteries in the pod system.

In January, HTT filed building permits to construct a five-mile test track in Quay Valley, California. They hope to have that test track up and running by 2018, according to CNBC.

A rival company with a similar name, Hyperloop Technologies, Inc. (HTI) has already begun construction on a hyperloop test track in Nevada. SpaceX is also planning to build a hyperloop test track for the winners of its Hyperloop Pod Competition to test prototype pods in the coming years.

There may be some significant hurdles to clear to get vacuum-sealed magnetic levitation transonic transportation up and running, but some of the brightest engineers in the nation are on the case.

Source: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

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