3 ms·
How do the engineers account for earthquakes on these trains? I could see it being quite disastrous if one were to occur while this train travelling at 500km/h.
by mkonecny 12y ago
How do the engineers account for earthquakes on these trains? I could see it being quite disastrous if one were to occur while this train travelling at 500km/h. Also I wonder what the efficiency is given that the train needs to push through the thick atmosphere at 0 altitude compared to airplanes which fly at their top speed in a very sparse atmosphere.
- bostonvaulter2 12y agoWhen the large japanese quake occurred I remember reading an article about how the Japanese Shinkansen have an automated system that will put on the brakes in the case of an earthquake. Within 2 or 5 seconds if I remember correctly.
- ojiikun 12y agoA network of seismometers to detect foreshocks all over the islands and a system to send an automated stop signal to trains. It worked in 2011 when all the high speed trains were successfully stopped ~10 seconds before the 9.0 mag quake hit: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/16/national/shinkansen-quake-survivability-key-selling-point/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2011/06/16/national/shinkan...
- jpatokal 12y agoThanks to the Shinkansen, Japan's had plenty of practice with this. Their "UrEDAS" (theoretically "Urgent Earthquake Detection and Alarm System", although this is just a backronym for yuredasu "starts to shake") monitors both P and S waves and brings trains to a halt automatically, and is considered the gold standard for this kind of thing. In the 50 years they've been running trains, there's been one (1) derailment due to an earthquake, with zero fatalities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Earthquake http://sdr.co.jp/papers/13wcee_uredas.pdf http://sdr.co.jp/papers/13wcee_uredas.pdf