Proof Intamin Can Learn From Their Mistakes

The sway he's talking about is not the tower. As best I can tell, if there's any movement at all, it's very minor. The sway he's talking about is in the pull-out at the end of the launch, the area where the track goes from horizontal to vertical. Just this last Friday night I was observing (alcohol makes everything more fascinating) that the lateral movement of the track ain't right. I thought for sure that the ride would've opened up this year with new supports to correct for that, but I was wrong.

I wouldn't be jaded about the engineering aspect of the amusement industry. Your experience is one of extremes, and more so one about money. Intamin wants to maintain margin, Cedar Point wanted to build as inexpensively as possible. Everything about Intamin is about money, which is ironic because I think if they hired smarter people that built more simple, elegant ride mechanisms, the rides themselves would be less expensive (and probably not kill people, or reduce the ability for stupid people to cause people to die).

Very well put Jeff. Sandor Kernac want's us all to get smaller so that their restraints will work, talking about money.

The track structure at the bottom is simply more flexible side to side than it is front to back. That is because the tower makes the structure very stiff front to back.

The sway is not caused by serpentine movement of the cable. What I think is causing the sway is the deceleration of the launch sled. The energy has to be absorbed, since the structure is very stiff front to back, the energy is transfered into a lateral swaying.

I doubt that the swaying will cause unusual fatigue wear, it's just not swaying enough. I've seen towers on some ski lifts, which are built much like TTD's vertical columns, sway at least as much front to back as TTD sways laterally. And these lifts run about 14 hrs a day, with the tower constantly swaying while the lift is running. I wouldn't make a big deal about the swaying, or look at it as some design flaw, it just doesn't matter.

If you are interested in swaying coasters, sit at Bubbles Bar and look to the top of Magnum's second hill. Big time swaying every time a train goes by. The reason a paper clip breaks is because the metal is being bent out of shape repeatedly. A coaster isn't being bent, think of it more as spring action. A spring can go through billions of cycles before it breaks, a coaster structure is similar, though the metal is different and not nearly as springy as, let's say, a car suspension spring.

As far as hydraulic contamination, if you are right about the cause being cavitation, that just heats up the fluid and causes sludge. The same stuff you find in an old Chevy that has had infrequent oil changes. You can clean out sludge. Purdue makes it sound like it's some cancer or acid that is impossible to control. Not so.

*** Edited 11/1/2004 7:47:04 PM UTC by Pete***

If we're talking about the horizontal sway at the end of the launch track that TTD has... I'm pretty sure Storm Runner already has some horizontal supports there to prevent this.

Naturally I can't find any photos offhand to back this up. :)

EDIT: Here's one.
http://www.themeparkreview.com/pa2004/hp/hp1.htm
About halfway down the page:
http://www.themeparkreview.com/pa2004/hp/hershey32.jpg
*** Edited 11/1/2004 4:22:09 PM UTC by bit0mike***

Reducing the sway will result in a launch that requires less power, I doubt it has anything to do with structural integrity. The train looses energy faster if the track is swaying a bit.