Since a railgun is basically a big short circuit, normal batteries and transformers wouldn’t work well due to their inability to provide enormous high current peaks. In order to achieve a high current through rails and projectile we need a huge, high amperage powersource: A capacitorbank. So what’s the plan for a small scale railgun experiment? Secondly the projectile gets hot due to the current flowing through it and its electrical resistance – again a great similarity to the real deal.Īnd last but not least, the projectile has to enter the railgun with a initial velocity, because otherwise it would get welded into place not accelerate at all. What does this small scale experiment reveal about railguns’ physics? First of all you can see sparks flying deteriorating the rails, just as in a real high power railgun. Outside China, Japan and South Korea – whose first Maglev line, linking Incheon International Airport to Seoul, opened in 2016 – magnetic levitation technology continues to evade mainstream consideration, in spite of its European beginnings.Drop the projectile touching both rails and it will start accelerating towards the end of the rails. Forever an outlier: Maglev’s uncertain destiny elsewhere In a statement, Tong said the new rolling stock had successfully hit speeds of 160km/h on the 18.5km line, compared to the 100km/h capacity of the old train. In late April, Tong Laisheng, director of CRRC’s Maglev Research Institute, revealed tests had been carried out on a new version of a train on the Changsha Maglev Express Line, which links the city in Hunan with Huanghua International Airport. While the project appears to have been temporarily put on ice due to the coronavirus pandemic, China’s emergence from the crisis has seen the resumption of new infrastructure projects. China Railway Group, a state-owned company, is purported to have already carried out a feasibility study for a new maglev network extending from Guangzhou to Beijing. In October, Changjiang Daily, the official newspaper of Wuhan, reported that tracks would be laid across the central province of Hubei in 2020 to test trains with speeds of up to 1,000km/h, based around a high-temperature, superconducting maglev theory. “Tracks will be laid across the central province of Hubei in 2020 to test trains with speeds of up to 1,000km/h.” A Communist Party-approved whitepaper published in September 2019, “Outline for Building China’s Strength in Transport”, included an entire chapter on the development of new maglev lines between its key urban hubs. Full speed ahead: China continues to prioritise maglevĪcross the East China Sea, Beijing has plans to retain its global position as maglev’s leading exponent – in addition to its ever-growing high-speed rail network. “The maglev constitutes not only an extraordinarily costly but also an abnormally energy-wasting project, consuming in operation between four and five times as much power as the Tokaido Shinkansen,” wrote Japanese researchers Hidekazu Aoki and Nobuo Kawamiya in a 2018 paper denouncing the project. Regardless of the economic disruption caused by Covid-19, there are some, however, that believe the maglev project is well in danger of losing money hand over a fist. With Japan already bracing itself for a post-pandemic recession, JR Central’s purse strings are likely to be tightened. The operator is therefore keen to see what the new train – consisting of 12 cars and stretching a total length of 300m – can do on the Yamanashi test line as soon as possible. “The maglev constitutes not only an extraordinarily costly but also an abnormally energy-wasting project.” Scheduled to open commercially in 2027, Japan’s network is based around superconducting magnets that are able to levitate the train by up to 10cm with minimal friction. Japan is betting big on the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line, which will cover the 178-mile distance between Tokyo and Nagoya at speeds of 500km/h, slashing the journey time to just 40 minutes. Tokyo – which first began exploring the merits of the technology in the late 1960s – is keen to steal a march on its longtime rival and unveil an even more ambitious maglev system of its own. It has been over 17 years since the Shanghai Transrapid (its official name) commenced operations, yet it remains the world’s fastest electric train. While Japan is already in possession of rail network based on magnetic levitation – the Linimo Line in the Aichi Prefecture, close to the city of Nagoya – it is considerably overshadowed by China’s commercial maglev service, which shuttles travellers between Shanghai and Pudong International airport at 268mph (the Linimo runs at 62mph).
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