Re: Kings Island attorney says woman suffered hip injury at work, not on Son of Beast
aerodynamic said:
What the hell is that link rollergator?
Don't tell me you can understand what that say's. That's craziness.
I don't know about Gator, but the contents of that link make perfect sense to me. They also demonstrate pretty dramatically what it is that seat belts do, why they are such a good idea in a car, and by extension, why they are really not well suited to amusement rides where the forces are usually much better controlled. Automotive engineers put a lot of effort into building a vehicle so that in a crash, it will collapse, increasing the distance over which the seat comes to a stop. Attaching the driver to the seat means that he gets to take advantage of that distance. Detaching the driver means that it doesn't matter how much the vehicle collapses, he comes to an abrupt stop when he impacts the dashboard.
Now somewhere around here I have a copy of the State incident report from the Son of Beast incident...
...Here it is. The report does not go into detail as to the dynamic results of the failure, but instead concentrates on the cause of the failure and the nature of the failure. The report indicates that when Bent #290 failed, it allowed the track to drop approximately five inches. Does anybody know approximately how fast the train would have been going roughly hafway up the uphill side of the big helix? I'm going to guess that the ledgers are about 6' apart, and if the train is going, say, 30 MPH (44 ft/sec) and it drops 6 inches...
Well, let's see... the train drops 0.5 feet in the first 6 feet, which means it travels in the Z direction (up and down)* 0.5 feet in 6/44 = 0.136 seconds. Hmmm...Applying a bunch of calculations, I'm only getting an acceleration of 55.56 ft/sec/sec which only works out to 1.74 G. That's acceleration in Z caused solely by the "pothole" in the rail caused by the failed bent. The whole bounce action happens over a distance of about twelve feet, which reduces the impact of the whole incident.
I know my calculations are not right. Anybody else want to give it a go?
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
* Based on the coordinate axis specified in ASTM F 2137...
/X\ _ *** Respect rides. They do not respect you. ***
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