VEHICLE
At a technical university in Switzerland there is a model of a Hyperloop in the scale 1:12. Recently, a record was broken when a capsule traveled 11.8 km around a circular orbit.
The Hyperloop hype possibly peaked a few years ago. But the dream of transporting passengers and goods in capsules in large steel tubes with low air pressure is not dead.
The concept was presented in 2013 by Elon Musk. But ideas about high-speed trains in vacuum tunnels have been around longer than that. Now a new record has been broken at the technical university EPFL in Switzerland.
The project called Limitless (Linear Induction Motor Drive for Traction and Levitation in Sustainable Hyperloop Systems) uses a 1:12 scale model. The steel pipe that makes up the loop itself has a diameter of 40 cm and the track has a circumference of 125.6 m.
Limitless is a collaboration between EPFL, the university HEIG-VD and the company Swisspod. In total, 82 tests have taken place during the project.
During the longest test, the capsule traveled 11.8 km and reached a top speed of 40.7 km. That equates to 141.6 km with a top speed of 488.2 km/h for a full-scale version, according to a press release. The air pressure in the tunnel was 50 millibars.
This is the longest distance traveled by a capsule in a Hyperloop to date, according to the journal New Atlas. But it is not the fastest a craft in a Hyperloop has moved. Earlier in the year, a craft in China reached 623 km/h during a test.
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Source: www.nyteknik.se
