Why Roller Coaster Track is Filled with Sand

For the past century, theme parks all over the world have been battling one another to construct taller, faster, and more exhilarating thrill machines in order to outshine the competition and attract the largest crowds. Driving this battle forward are the engineers and roller coaster designers who have developed innovative ways to build these towering structures so that they are both safe and reliable. Over the years, each roller coaster design company has established their own signature design style with recognizable characteristics that set their coasters apart from the rest. A few examples include the I-beam design of Rocky Mountain Construction, or RMC, which consists of a continuous steel I-section with integrated rails; The truss design of Intamin, which consists of small steel tubes that are welded together to form a 3-dimensional truss; And the box beam design of Bolliger and Mabillard, or B&M, which consists of a continuous steel box section that supports two rails using fin plates. Although the various design styles are quite unique, they all accomplish the same task of supporting high-speed roller coaster trains as they hurtle through the air. If you have ever been to a major theme park, you may have noticed that in addition to having a unique visual appearance, each track design also produces a distinct sound as the trains speed over them. The sound produced by a given roller coaster is directly related to the design of the track, and of all the various track styles, the box beam design produces one of the loudest and most recognizable sounds. The box beam track design developed by B&M has a continuous steel spine that is formed by a hollow rectangular cross-section. Steel fin plates are welded to the top of the spine at regular intervals, and these fin plates support the two rails which are made from circular steel tubes. When trains travel along the rails at high speeds, vibrations are induced in the track which propagate throughout the entire cross-section. These vibrations generate sound that we can hear, and the large hollow box beams actually amplify the sound due to their size and geometry. Although the roar of a B&M roller coaster is iconic and downright intimidating, the noise can be a problem in certain situations, particularly when theme parks are located adjacent to residential areas. A prime example of this is Canada’s Wonderland, which is a theme park located in Ontario, Canada. The park first opened in the early 1980’s, and at that time it was surrounded only by farm land. However, that farm land was gradually overtaken by urban sprawl as the nearby city expanded, and a large residential area was eventually constructed adjacent to the park. Now perhaps you shouldn’t move into a house located across the street from a theme park if you don’t like the sound of roller coasters, but a lot people may have overlooked this issue at the time. In 2006, Canada’s Wonderland was purchased by the Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, which invested millions of dollars into the park to build numerous world-class thrill rides. The biggest of them all came 2012, when Canada’s Wonderland introduced Leviathan; The tallest roller coaster that B&M had ever built to date, standing at 93 m tall and reaching speeds of nearly 150 km/hr. The giga coaster was constructed right at the front of the park, and it extended out into the parking lot just a few hundred meters away from the neighboring residential area. And was this coaster ever loud. Every time a train dived down the first drop, the sound could clearly be heard by the residents across the street, and this obviously led to numerous noise complaints. The park hired an acoustical consultant to perform an assessment of the sound produced by the ride, and it was determined that something had to be done to quiet down the Leviathan. In the end, it was decided that the best way to reduce the noise produced by the roller coaster would be to fill the track with sand. Since the first drop was the primary culprit of the noise problem, attention was focused only on this part of the ride. It was not possible to fill the rails with sand because this would require the rails to be cut open and welded closed, which would be detrimental to the smoothness of the ride, however they could cut open and fill the box beams. Once engineers determined that the structure and its foundations could support the additional weight, the park moved forward with their plan. First, a hole was cut into each box beam section of the first drop by workers on a large boom lift. Sand was then blown into each section using an aggregate blower, which used compressed air to deliver the sand to the required height through a long tube. Since each section of track is sealed at both ends where the individual pieces are bolted together, sand had to be blown into each track section individually rather than filling the entire box beam at once. After the entire drop was filled, the holes in the box beams were welded shut and the work was complete. This method of noise reduction was successful, and the noise produced by the roller coaster was greatly reduced. The sand inside the track works by damping the vibration of the steel which reduces the amplitude of the resulting sound waves. As the steel walls of the box beam vibrate against the sand, the walls push against the sand and move the individual particles, which transfers energy away from the steel. This loss of energy translates to a reduction in the amplitude of the vibrations, and the volume of the sound is therefore reduced. The same technique has been used for a number of other roller coasters as well, including Gatekeeper at Cedar Point in Ohio, and Yukon Striker at Canada’s Wonderland. However, for these two coasters, it was known in advance that noise could be a potential problem, and so the rails were filled with sand during track fabrication before the roller coasters were erected. It’s likely that the engineers decided to fill the rails and not the box beams in these two cases because a smaller volume of sand is required, and it would have been very difficult to transport and install the track pieces if they were completely filled with sand due to the huge increase in weight. Even though less sand is used, filling the rails alone is still an effective method for reducing the level of sound produced by a roller coaster. Filling roller coaster track with sand has been shown to be a good solution to the noisy roller coaster problem, and it can be used for both new roller coasters as well as existing roller coasters. It is a clever yet simple technique, and perhaps we will see it implemented more frequently in the future. Hey everyone, thank you for watching this video, I really hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to subscribe if you would like to see more videos from this channel, and please consider supporting me on Patreon using the link in the description so I can continue to improve my content and grow the channel. I also invite you to leave suggestions in the comments below for topics that you want to see in future videos. Again, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Channel: Art of Engineering

Views: 3,041,282

Keywords: roller, coaster, rollercoaster, track, sand, fill, filled, sound, noise, noisy, loud, quiet, design, science, engineering, engineer, steel, structure, structural, designed, built, explained, art, leviathan, canada's, wonderland, canada, behemoth, yukon, stiker, construction, amusement, theme, park, themepark, cedar, point, fair, gatekeeper, cinematic, history, ride, thrill, technology, mechanical, energy, vibration, acoustic, drone, intamin, rmc, rocky, mountain, six, flags, bolliger, mabillard, POV, on-ride, off-ride, footage, b&m

Id: Qx4RnlsXAV0

Length: 6min 53sec (413 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MainBattleGoat]

Why make a video about roller coaster sounds without playing a single rollercoaster sound?

[u/YOUREABOT]

Sand filled metal? I’m going guess vibration dampening? Surprise, I was right.

[u/DavefaceFMS]

It takes a little while to get to the point with some background and it's low-level stuff but I found it interesting.

[u/red_ikea_bin]

So how do they get the sand in? Blow it in like you would do with transferring a powdered bulk product from a truck to a silo?