The Delft Hyperloop student team has presented its latest design: Helios II. This prototype of the futuristic means of transport is now fully floating, includes a cooling system and a new engine. These are important steps towards a future hyperloop transportation system.
The idea for the hyperloop was put on the map ten years ago by Elon Musk. It must be a transport system in which a so-called pod, a kind of train carriage, rushes through a vacuum tube. A magnet system ensures that the pod floats above or below a track, and is therefore not affected by rolling resistance from wheels. Without air and rolling resistance you should be able to reach a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour. You can travel from Amsterdam to Paris in half an hour.
Floating hyperloop pod
The hyperloop is not that far yet. The prototypes now being developed by teams such as Delft Hyperloop are not yet able to carry passengers, and travel only a few tens of meters. But the companies and student teams working on it regularly take technical steps that should bring a large-scale hyperloop system closer.
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Helios II, the latest Delft design, has three major changes compared to previous prototypes. For example, the previous design still had wheels against the track. That was necessary for the steering. ‘We have now replaced that with electromagnets, so that our prototype floats completely’, says Twan Terpstra Delft Hyperloop.
Propulsion from the pod
Furthermore, the students have designed a new motor that is mounted on the pod. Last year, the propulsion still came from the track. ‘At that time there was a large permanent magnet on the vehicle and electromagnets in the orbit’, Terpstra explains. “Those electromagnets were controlled to propel or slow down the vehicle.”
In the new design, the static magnetic part is located in the track. There are permanent magnets and coils on the vehicle. The coils control the magnetic field of the permanent magnets so that the vehicle can pull forward along the track.
‘The advantage of having an engine in the vehicle instead of on the track is that the transport system becomes more scalable,’ says Terpstra. An engine on board is cheaper and easier to build than a kilometer-long track with a propulsion mechanism made of expensive materials.
Heat battery
The third major change is that Helios II has a heat storage system on board, a so-called heat battery. It consists of a kind of wax that absorbs and stores the heat from the engine, so that the pod does not overheat.
Overheating is not yet a risk for the current test system. The pod does not travel through a vacuum tube, but through the outside air, to which the heat can be released. Terpstra: ‘But ultimately the pod has to travel through a vacuum tube, where it cannot dissipate the heat.’
2050
With the Helios II, Delft Hyperloop wants to participate in the European Hyperloop Week that will take place this year in Edinburgh, Scotland. Last year, the team won the main prize at this event. Terpstra: ‘Because we are now coming up with major improvements, I think we have a chance of winning again.’
Anyone who fantasizes about stepping into a hyperloop to have lunch in Paris will have to be patient a little longer. There are still quite a few technical challenges. In addition to the pod and the track, for example, the heat battery and the normal battery will also have to be improved and scaled up before the hyperloop can cover serious distances.
The European goal is to have a first small hyperloop by 2030, only for freight transport. The first passenger journeys are not expected until around 2040. And a complete hyperloop network is planned for 2050. Provided everything is up rolls magnets run.