Question Was X designed from the heart line?

Saw the latest pics from TR it showed the car diassembed. To my surprise it looks as though the wheels are designed to ride from inside the rails major plus. It seems that the ride will be smooth especially without the lat G's. My question is how was X designed from the heartline or like the other arrows designed from riding on the rails instead of in between.

That's a good question.  If I were to hazard a guess, i'd say it was designed with the rider's center of gravity (heartline) as the center of rotation, but seeing as how this ride doesn't have many actual twists, it may not be noticeable.  There really isn't any reason not to anymore, with the advent of modern comptuers and software that helps coaster designers design.  Manually, or with older computers, it would've been extrememly difficult to design around the heartline, unless you had a gut feeling like Swartzkopf did.  If in fact Arrow isn't using the heartline, I will be dissapointed.

-seth

For a heartline to be used, don't you have to be in between the tracks? All the other hearline coasters are like that. (the ultra twisters and Viper @ SFGAdv)

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Hi! I'm Hungry, whats your name?

TrBeggar, you're thinking of pipeline.  We're talking about where the axis of rotation is taken...modern coasters (Intamin and B&M) use the line of the heart where as old school Arrows use a line in between the running rails.  Here's a good example of a coaster designed with the heartline http://www.rcdb.com/installationgallery1076.htm?Picture=5 We'll just have to wait and see on X to see how arrow did it.

-seth

Heartline vs track design is pretty irrelevant with the geomertry of the cars on X.  Your heart is very nearly at track level.  Also, the idea of heartline design (which would really better be headline design) is to have your body very nearly roll (rotate) around the heart to eliminate jerks.  With the geometry of X, you are more likely to have sudden vertical jerks.  When the train rolls, the riders on one side move up while the riders on the other side move down.  However, it would be possible to design the track adding some vertical movement to the roll so that one side doesn't move up or down while the other moves twice as far.

Good point Jim that inversion sounds very cool

No, I wasn't thinking of Arrow's pipeline. I guess that you don't have to be in the middle of the track like on UTs and Viper, but I don't think X can really ride that way. Oh well. I'm too tired to try to explain, but I'll try anyways. Using the example you gave me, X can do that... but only 1/2 of it. That heartline roll looks like it gives 0 gs, like a heartline roll is supposed to. Because of the seat's location on X, only 1/2 of them can do that, and the other 1/2 would be pounded with positive Gs because they are not in between the roll, but instead to the far left or right of it. If that is confusing, or makes no sense, sorry. I'm too tired right now to do much of anything. Well, I guess that means I'm going to bed.
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Hi! I'm Hungry, whats your name?

I think the term 'heartline' roll is very misleading. It has more to do with the center of mass of the trains than with anyone's heart. Not even sure why 'heart' come into this in the first place. \

Basically, the B&M invented heartline is the first inversion where the path of the track does not provide the force to keep people in their seats(ie vertical loops, corkscrews). It relies on the people being weightless (if you watch a heartline from the side, the track may look flat, but center of mass of the trains follows a parabola, same as an airtime hill on a traditional woodie. So that's why you feel weightless. And since riders don't feel the force caused by gravity (momentarily), the rotation of the train around the track is enough to keep them in their seats without uncomfortable lateral forces.

X seems to utilize this same concept in it's two 180 flips. You'll notice, the first one especially, is is a regular parabolic hill. riders will feel weigthless, and the train is too. If the train was on flat track and rolled, it would experience a lot of strain in conteracting gravity, and riders would be slammed against their restraints. By putting it an a zero g hill, those forces are temporarily negated, allowing a seemingly impossible roll.

See, I'm like an expert or something.

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Can't this thing go any faster?