Posted on 06/04/2012 6:04:16 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
California's politicians have until Aug 31 to give a final green light to an initial $6 billion, 130-mile section of track in the Central Valley
Ambitious plans for a fast track linking Los Angeles and San Francisco at speeds of up to 220mph in just over two-and-a-half hours were slimly approved by 53 per cent in a statewide ballot in 2008. That allowed the state to raise $10 billion from bonds and secured an injection of $3.5 billion in stimulus money from the Obama administration. There is currently no direct train route between the two.
Construction is expected to begin later this year in the middle of California's Central Valley near Merced, a town of 80,000 people known for having one of the highest home foreclosure rates in America.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I’m no math wiz but I think a train that travels at 300mph would mean the energy released in a car/train accident would be 16 times what it would be if the train was just going 60mph.
So hitting a 1200lb cow at 300mph would be the same a train hitting a 20,000lb object at 60mph. I’m thinking de-railment.
$728 per INCH of track.
What’s the problem? This has “shovel ready” written all over it.
/S
Your math is correct, but trains are designed to handle spattering flesh and bone. Been designed that way for a very long time.
Splattering steel? They try, but at 220 mph, no way. And the remains of a large steel object have a good chance of derailing the train. Then, as I said, ka-boom!
Ooops, it’s 25 time more...
The trains will go up to 220 miles per hour, but will NEVER average that speed. There are intermediate stops between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The trains will be slowing down and speeding up numerous times. They will be lucky to average 100 miles per hour.
Where is the power coming from to run these trains? Electricity. Where is all that electrical power going to come from? The few riders are going to be paying a very small fraction of the operating costs. Guess who is paying for most of it . . . the tax payers!
The energy that is released during a collision is equal to the difference of initial energy of the train and the residual energy of the train after the collision. If the train is completely stopped by the obstacle then all kinetic energy of the train (m*v^2) is delivered and the train is at rest.
So two things here matter: how much energy is produced in a collision and over what period of time this delivery of energy occurs. With regard to the latter, you can safely burn a ton of powder in your revolver, one round at a time. But if you combine all that powder into one charge you'd better have a good cannon at hand.
Collisions are hard to accurately simulate because of the nature of the obstacle. But we can easily say that the mass of the train far exceeds the mass of a cow. In collision therefore the speed of the train will be virtually unchanged. Then all we need to worry about is acceleration of the cow to the speed of the train.
We know exactly how much it takes: E=m*v^2. Energy increases with speed squared. (m*v1^2)/(m*v2^2) = (v1/v2)^2. Using your values (300 mph and 60 mph) we get 25 (not 16.)
If you want to see what difference the mass makes, m1*300^2 = m2*60^2. Solving for m2 we get: m2=(m1*300^2)/60^2. Using your 1,200lb cow at 300 mph we see that the mass of an equivalent obstacle at 60 mph would be 30,000 lb or 13 tons. It's about four adult elephants standing on tracks side by side. (and of course our methods start to fail here because the train is not rigid enough to plow through so many elephants.)
I’m thinking de-railment.
More than likely. The train will be seriously compressed even if the cow (or elephants) are accelerated to the train's speed. In reality the train will crumple first. The energy of the collision will be about 10 MJ. The energy density of TNT is 2.1 MJ/lb. So a collision with a cow is equivalent to exploding about 5 lb of TNT. Far smaller quantities in World War II used to blow whole engines off the track.
Thank you Greysard!
I can’t imagine the destruction and carnage that would occur with a 300mph train hitting a single cow, now imagine it hits an entire herd.
So California will have to create an impenetrable wall for the entire length of this high-speed train to keep it safe...
I have an idea! Lets build this high speed train from, (a few miles south of San Diego) to Yuma, AZ. Then from Yuma AZ to El Paso Tx - Next stop Larado, Tx - Final Destination: Brownsville TX!
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