Hyperloop - essentially new transport

[Alexey]

One of these days on the TV I have seen news which has shaken me: Elon Musk has decided to intrigue the world - has declared that will soon open the project of essentially new personal transport. Which will move with speed of a sound, but will be cheaper than the plane . The construction cost of a line will be much lower, than for a high-speed train (something - here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop <http://slon.ru/fast/future/elon-mask-obeshchaet-transport-budushchego-966070.xhtml) /

As has told Musk it Will turn out average between "Concord", a rail gun and aerohockey. But more has told nothing: holds an intrigue.

I, think, have understood in what here a secret and have decided this intrigue to break:)
In my opinion - it is very simple. I am surprised that anybody has not guessed before earlier it.

The line represents a pipe in which will be constantly supported high vacuum. That will provide low friction, and, hence, and high speed. But on such high speed of a wheel - will not sustain. And magnetic pillows - are expensive. It would be possible to fly, if vacuum is not so high. But to fly - always it is less energetically favourable, than to be floating on an air pillow. Therefore the "line" works so, that as soon as capsule "on" - the apertures under capsule will open and atmospheric air directs under capsule, creating effect of an air pillow. And as soon as capsule will leave from this place - the valve are there and then closed.
The aero-input of air will be not big. About 0,1 atmospheres.So, friction will be in tens times less, than in an atmosphere. And powerful the aero pumps will extort constantly of air from a pipe .
And speed will give magnets. Small friction about unloaded air will brake capsule nevertheless. Therefore the electromagnets will push it through everyone of ~30 kilometers.

The mechanism of work of this system:
I assume, that possible to improve it.

 

[mfb]

Evacuation of the tube - even partially - needs a lot of energy. Why would you waste that by letting more air flow in?

In a tube with well-defined track-like structures, something like a hovercraft looks possible, using the existing air in the tube and the walls.

We'll see in 9 days.

 

[256bits]

It could be that he would like to propose a scaled up version of those air tube systems used in banks for small packages.

 

[AlephZero]

Unless Elon Musk is now living in an parallel universe, I call BS.

Being rich and famous makes it easier to get people to listen to crackpot ideas, but it doesn't change the laws of physics.

 

[mheslep]

Released:
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf
He's gone with a low vacuum, not hard. $6 billion for an LA to SF system, a tenth the price of the far slower proposed high speed rail system. Works out to $20 per trip. Nice piece or work.

 

[mheslep]

Evacuation of the tube - even partially - needs a lot of energy.

381 mile tube, 1 meter radius: 193 GJ to pump down, or 2MW over 24 hours.

 

[mfb]

Or 100MW over 30 minutes, if you have to repeat it frequently (as Alexey suggested).
And that assumes 100% efficiency.

 

[etudiant]

The key idea is of a much lower weight vehicle, because the stresses of high speed travel are carried by the entire structure rather than concentrated on the tiny contact patch between the steel wheel and the rail.
The tube and partial vacuum are essential refinements, the tube to keep the roadway clear and the partial vacuum to keep down the energy cost of pushing away the air.
While it might take a while for people to get comfortable with a long high speed ride inside a glorified sewer pipe, cargo would have no such problems. Provided the service can find routes that generate enough volume,
it might well be viable. Whether the truckers or the railways would welcome it is another question.

 

[mfb]

I think the concept will need significant improvements before it gets widely used for cargo. In terms of stations, it looks even less flexible than regular rails (as junctions are tricky), and you cannot transport standard container sizes with the proposed tube. So how do you get cargo to the hyperloop station, in the tube, out of the tube, and from a different hyperloop station to its destination?

 

[etudiant]

Entirely agree that junctions are a real issue, they were a bear even for monorails and here vacuum seals are involved.
Cargo transport with containers is less of an issue imho. Airplanes have long used smaller containers, both igloos and containers with cut off corners. An 8x10 ft container would need more than a 3 meter diameter tube to fit. It does raise a gauge question for this concept, a bigger tube would have advantages, but the size picked initially would determine all future design parameters, much as Stephenson's choice of the carriage gauge for his train tracks. A bigger gauge would have been much better for train development, but even Brunel's effort to introduce it failed because too much was already invested in the incompatible small gauge tracks.

 

[Aero_UoP]

I think somone's taking Futurama too literally ( watch 0.08-0.11)

 

[mheslep]

The key idea is of a much lower weight vehicle, because the stresses of high speed travel are carried by the entire structure ...

While it might take a while for people to get comfortable with a long high speed ride inside a glorified sewer pipe, cargo would have no such problems. ...

Cargo throws away the advantage of light weight. Traditional high speed rail doesn't handle cargo for the same reason -- too much lateral force in turns.

 

[mheslep]

Regarding the low cost, $6B or about 6% of the (much slower) high speed rail proposal, the primary rationale appears to be the adoption of a utility pole line cost model versus one of ground level track.

The key advantages of a tube vs. a railway track are that it can be built above the ground on pylons and it can be built in prefabricated sections that are dropped in place and joined with an orbital seam welder. By building it on pylons, you can almost entirely avoid the need to buy land by following alongside the mostly very straight California Interstate 5 highway, with only minor deviations when the highway makes a sharp turn.

Even when the Hyperloop path deviates from the highway, it will cause minimal disruption to farmland roughly comparable to a tree or telephone pole, which farmers deal with all the time. A ground based high speed rail system by comparison needs up to a 100 ft wide swath of dedicated land to build up foundations for both directions, forcing people to travel for several miles just to get to the other side of their property. It is also noisy, with nothing to contain the sound, and needs unsightly protective fencing to prevent animals, people or vehicles from getting on to the track. ...

The argument appears valid to me. The criticism based on based on political impediments in California for large right of ways seems ill founded.

Can anyone offer typical cost per mile for pole elevated utility lines? The cost of the material and even labor is irrelevant, but the right of way cost is of interest.

Edit: Ah, http://www.aep.com/about/transmission/docs/transmission-facts.pdfposts their installed costs (surprisingly) for high voltage transmission. They have $4 million per mile worst case, which includes "siting and ROW", or no more than $1.5 billion for ROW and siting, LA to SF. Musk gives $1B for "permits and land." (pg 56).

 

[tjej]

There are other challenges for the Hyperloop design such as the problem of dissipating heat from the LIM (which is only 50%-75% efficient). The waste will turn up as heat and most of this would go the rotor on the vechicle.

One the cost side I have seen an estimate for the costs of a pair of gas pipeline the same diameter as Hyperloop at $ 2.5 billion. (priced at $25,000 per inch (diameter) per kilometer from Gas Pipelines, In-Field Transport, Transmission Pipelines, LNG tanker, Natural Gas–powered Vehicles ) Given the precision required in fabrication and installation of a raised pylon this alone would be substantial. There seems to be no reason to quote such a unreasonably low cost figure EXCEPT to make the CHSR seem unreasonably expensive. (Probably the point, as has been pointed out elsewhere.)

Any money Musk has spent on the project so far could be written off as "publicity".

 

[mheslep]

There are other challenges for the Hyperloop design such as the problem of dissipating heat from the LIM (which is only 50%-75% efficient). The waste will turn up as heat and most of this would go the rotor on the vechicle.

The rotary induction motor used the Tesla vehicles, to which the proposal compares the LIM, is more than 90% efficient. But even in the case of a much lower efficiency for a linear version, how is heat dissipation an issue with the 1000 kph air flow seen by the passenger vehicle? Recall that sufficient air is collected already to supply air bearings.

One the cost side I have seen an estimate for the costs of a pair of gas pipeline the same diameter as Hyperloop at $ 2.5 billion. (priced at $25,000 per inch (diameter) per kilometer from Gas Pipelines, In-Field Transport, Transmission Pipelines, LNG tanker, Natural Gas–powered Vehicles )

That is the cost given for offshore pipeline installation in that reference, surely not comparable.

Given the precision required in fabrication and installation of a raised pylon this alone would be substantial. There seems to be no reason to quote such a unreasonably low cost figure EXCEPT to make the CHSR seem unreasonably expensive. (Probably the point, as has been pointed out elsewhere.)
...

Musk's price for land and right of way ($1 billion LA-SF) is very comparable with the costs given by elevated transmission line companies. The costs of underground systems (e.g. gas pipelines) would seem to require more right of way and interference with structures and properties crossing the pipe path.

 

[AlephZero]

Musk's price for land and right of way ($1 billion LA-SF) is very comparable with the costs given by elevated transmission line companies.

I don't understand the basis for that claim.

Elevated transmission lines have relatively small weight, small wind resistance, and are flexible. There is no big problem in changing direction through any required angle at any support pylon.

On the other hand Musk's system seems to require a structurally rigid large diameter pipe aligned with relatively close tolerances, and certainly with no sharp curves either in its track along the ground or changes of vertical gradient.

IMO a more relevant comparison would be with constructing a continuous overhead footbridge or cycle track, not a transmission line. (And a footbridge would be a much less demanding structural design than Musk's system).

 

[Aero51]

Im surprised nobody on the design team has considered using ground effect vehicles in the tube to eliminate the need to compress the air all together.

 

[mheslep]

I don't understand the basis for that claim.

Elevated transmission lines have relatively small weight, small wind resistance, and are flexible. There is no big problem in changing direction through any required angle at any support pylon.

On the other hand Musk's system seems to require a structurally rigid large diameter pipe aligned with relatively close tolerances, ...

Take a look at the proposal. The one billion dollar figure refers *only* to land and right of way. The balance of the system, i.e. construction of pylons, tubes, capsules, etc is five to six billion more per the proposal.

 

[mheslep]

Im surprised nobody on the design team has considered using ground effect vehicles in the tube to eliminate the need to compress the air all together.

At 0.001 atm (pg 12)?

 

[tjej]

The rotary induction motor used the Tesla vehicles, to which the proposal compares the LIM, is more than 90% efficient. But even in the case of a much lower efficiency for a linear version, how is heat dissipation an issue with the 1000 kph air flow seen by the passenger vehicle? Recall that sufficient air is collected already to supply air bearings.

That is the cost given for offshore pipeline installation in that reference, surely not comparable.

Musk's price for land and right of way ($1 billion LA-SF) is very comparable with the costs given by elevated transmission line companies. The costs of underground systems (e.g. gas pipelines) would seem to require more right of way and interference with structures and properties crossing the pipe path.

The efficiency is likely to be closer to the normal 50% given the air gap will be wider to allow for the fact that the vehicle will have to dynamically align itself down the channel. Given the speed, that is lot of energy and so means a lot of heat. If the heat is dissipated in the remaining air in the tube it will accumulate quickly given there are launches every 2 minutes.

Despite the obvious difference with undersea gas pipe lines, this does not negate the comparison. Hyperloop's tube must be made to a much higher precision than ordinary gas pipe and it is laid on elevated pylons. IMHO the complexity and cost of both makes it a worthy benchmark.

 

[mfb]

Hovering on the air is basically an application of the ground effect. The active compression reduces air resistance.

 

[mheslep]

Despite the obvious difference with undersea gas pipe lines, this does not negate the comparison. Hyperloop's tube must be made to a much higher precision than ordinary gas pipe and it is laid on elevated pylons. IMHO the complexity and cost of both makes it a worthy benchmark.

Perhaps pipeline costs are useful for benchmarking the tube costs, but such would not be the primary cost driver: land and right of way is.

The unbounded costs observed in other projects like the California High Speed Rail come largely from land and right of way costs running the project up to $100B, not the rolling stock and rail. The Hyperloop proposal claims to reduce the land/ROW costs by use of an elevated path. If such a less intrusive approach is successful, then the remaining cost of construction is likely bounded to less than 10% that of ground level HSR.

 

[mheslep]

By far the single largest line item cost in the Hyperloop proposal is the pylons: $2.6B, reinforced concrete, with the actual tube cost far behind at $650 million. The pylons are specifed as one every 30m or 25,000 in total, 6m tall typically.

It may be that a method for reducing the pylon cost is to use another lighter weight material for the tubes. The tube material is steel (22 mm wall, 2.3 m ID). Carbon fiber reinforced polymer, for example, would be more expensive than steel, but it has a specific strength ten times that of steel. A CFRP tube would likely allow increased pylon spacing, and reduced pylon size.

I can't readily find information to bound the cost of a CFRP tube. The steel tube works out to 1.3 metric tons per linear meter of tube, with steel currently at $650/ton.

 

[mheslep]

Apparently the Hyperloop concept has become serious in terms of financial support and technical staff. Forbes says there are now three companies at work, and Musk has said he will finance a 5 mile test track in Texas. They are still reporting impressive $20 million/mile cost figures, or ~ten times less than the proposed California High Speed Rail project which runs ~5x slower.

That said, I don't see a viable approach to the thermal expansion of the vacuum tube. Existing gas/fluid pipelines are deployed with room to flex; even underground pipelines are designed so as to displace soil or compressible surroundings (e.g. foam) and allow for expansion. The hyperloop with its high speed capsules mean the flex budget has to be in the sub mm range per span. This leaves only i) pressurized slip joints, or ii) axial expansion along the entire length of the pressurized route. Pylon tube mounts that allow axial slip are possible, but the expansion at the terminals seems extreme: a 500 km steel tube has axial expansion 117 m over 30 deg F. I don't know of any parallels in other infrastructure.

Edit: carbon fiber composites offer a substantial improvement in CTE, a factor of ~7 less, or 16 m/30degF at the the terminals.

 

[mfb]

Airtight joints with some space to expand don't look so problematic I think. You can build something like bridge expansion joints (in vacuum) for the track and make them airtight outside.

Moving around 500km of steel tube looks too complicated.

 

[mheslep]

Airtight joints with some space to expand don't look so problematic I think. You can build something like bridge expansion joints (in vacuum) for the track and make them airtight outside.

Certainly expansion joints are nothing new. Its the airtight aspect that presents a problem. Airtight slip joints are available, but I imagine they are expensive at 2.3m OD if used at every section and are not likely to be compatible with in the tight internal tolerances (sub mm).
http://www.flex-weld.com/multi-ply-expansion-joints.html
http://www.garlock.com/en/product/rubber-expansion-joints
http://www.holzrubber.com/pipe-expansion-joints/

BTW - no wheels, so no track. Air bearings.

 

[Baluncore]

Last time I looked both SF and LA were on the coastline.
There would be little ROW problem and no CTE or cooling problems if the tube was submerged along the coast.

 

[mheslep]

Last time I looked both SF and LA were on the coastline.
There would be little ROW problem and no CTE or cooling problems if the tube was submerged along the coast.

Yes. That's a reminder that insulating and temperature controlling the tube is another approach on land.

Any idea of the cost premium of undersea pipe versus land based? Undersea pipe for this application can't lie on the sea floor.

 

[mheslep]

In the original Hyperloop proposal the system was to be powered completely by solar PV which would line the tube plus batteries. Per the Forbes article, according to the new chief engineer of Hyperloop Technologies, BamBrogan, the electric power load is greater than what can be supplied by solar PV. The tube length allows a lot of PV, so that assertion seems curious:

Supply:
The LA to SF distance is 612 km. To start, assume a 2m wide PV array along the length of the tube. Given the discussion above about expansion, the tube needs some kind of sun-shield anyway. The PV collection area is then 1.2x10⁶ m², which collects 1.2 GW of solar radiation in peak hours; converted at 20% yields 240 MWe peak (~$750m or $2m/mile). Assuming 5 peak hours of collection and 20 hours of operation, average power supplied is 60 MWe using 0.9 GWh of battery storage (ignoring charging losses), against ~35 GWh/yr global battery (li ion) production. With current battery technology the cost is $270 million ($0.7million/mile) with weight 3000 mt (ignoring battery replacement).

Load:
Maglev trains operating in the air (i.e. no vacuum) at low speeds supposedly use ~0.2 kWh per passenger-mile (http://www.aertc.org/conference/AEC_Sessions%5CCopy%20of%20Session%201%5CTrack%20E-%20Innovation%5CIntelligent%20Advanced%20Transport%5C3.%20Dr.%20James%20Powell%5CJames%20Powell%20presentation.pdf). The Hyperloop at 700 mph has significant differences driving energy usage, but given then soft vacuum for Hyperloop perhaps existing maglev energy use is not so different for a first estimate. If the 0.2 kWh/pass-mile holds, power per passenger at 700 mph is 140 kW, or 14MW / 100 passengers in the loop at anyone time. With the assumed 2m wide PV array the loop would have a continuous capacity of 400 passengers over the LA-SF route. Cost of the PV+batteries is ~$2.7 million/mile. The grid connection for cloudy days, etc is still inevitable. The capacity demand fee alone is ~ $15/kW, which for 60 MW is $11 million/year, i.e. another $0.03 million/mile/year. All together power infrastructure with this approach becomes nearly 15% of the total per mile cost.

My guess then is that Hyperloop Tech rejected PV and batteries for the cost, not the technical feasibility.