Casestudy: SpaceX Hyperloop-competitie

Over de wedstrijd

Elk jaar, SpaceX holds its annual Hyperloop Pod-competitie op hun hoofdkantoor in Hawthorne, DAT. De Hyperloop is een vorm van snel transport, geconceptualiseerd door Elon Musk in 2013 en is voortdurend opnieuw geconceptualiseerd door startups en studententeams over de hele wereld. Het uiteindelijke doel van de Hyperloop is om te reizen met snelheden van 700 mph of meer en een revolutie teweeg te brengen in het vervoer in steden over de hele wereld. Bij de wedstrijd, teams compete in developing a pod that can travel the fastest down a mile-long vacuum tube.

Hyperloop-team van de Universiteit van Washington

SkyCiv sponsored the University of Washington Hyperloop team last year where ze plaatsten #4 in de wereld en #1 in de natie. An outcome that resulted in 3 van de 6 team members attaining internships at SpaceX! What’s even more impressive is they also came in with the cheapest vehicle in the top-scoring teams; spending just $35,000, in comparison to some other teams budget $230,000 – $1,000,000. SkyCiv is proud to sponsor this team of inspiring, intelligente en vindingrijke studenten, die hun stempel op de concurrentie willen drukken.

SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk alongside Washington Hyperloop team member Mitchell Frimodt
(Bron: Washington Hyperloop Twitter)

Hoe SkyCiv hielp

Ik heb John Buffalo ingehaald, Structures Lead for the University of Washington Hyperloop team to see how the competition went and how they improved on their design from last year. “Last year’s design was really heavy. The goal this year was to build a lighter composite, voornamelijk van C-kanalen.”

John and his team first started out using SkyCiv Beam to analyze the beams; looking at the stresses of the section under applied loads. Dit gebruiken, in combinatie met SkyCiv Section Builder, they entered the material properties of the carbon fiber material to get the stresses and deflection results of the beams.

“Once we nailed down the geometry of our C channel, we looked at ways to maximize the stiffness for a minimum weight.” Scripting up a program in Matlab, the team was able to optimize the cross-section and cross-reference the results back in SkyCiv.

Vervolgens werd een verdere spanningsanalyse uitgevoerd, using ANSYS to finalize their design with a factor of safety of two.

Ik wil het team helpen? Bezoek https://www.hyperloop.io/ to get involved as a sponsor today.