Colloquia

Summary

During the design phase of coasters, the behaviour of coaster structures has to be predicted to assess if the structure is sufficient and can withstand the loads that act on the structure. Different calculation simplifications are applied since precise predictions of the behaviour result in extensive calculations which are time-consuming. However, the safety of the coaster passengers should still be guaranteed and therefore conservative calculation methods are required to compensate for the simplifications applied and fulfil the safety requirements.

One of the most important simplifications commonly applied on dynamic systems is the assumption that all construction components are rigid. However, the influence of flexibility can be significant especially for fatigue analyses. Since fatigue analyses are commonly decisive during the design phase of coaster structures, this study investigates the influence of flexibility on the chassis beam of a spinning coaster. In fact, the flexibility influence is investigated by comparing the results of rigid multibody analyses with flexible multibody analyses.

Additionally, structural parameters that affect the behaviour of the flexible chassis beam such as stiffness, damping and wheel-track clearance, are investigated. The influence of stiffness and damping on the chassis behaviour is investigated by analysing chassis beams with varying stiffness and damping values. The influence of clearance between the wheels and the track is investigated by comparing the results of a multibody model with Point-on-Curve wheel-track constraints (without clearance) and the results of a multibody model with contact model (including clearance).  In the end, the conclusions about flexibility influence are based on the damage values of the different analyses, which are calculated with stress over time data.