This summer, the Cooper Union Hyperloop team participated at the 2021 European Hyperloop Week (EHW) in Valencia, Spain. 

Hyperloop is SpaceX’s concept for high-speed ground transportation and is intended to actualize an advanced high-speed rail system to reduce travel time between large cities.

At EHW, the team presented and demonstrated their current pod to the EHW jury. You can view their EHW PowerPoint presentation here. 

Their demonstration consisted of three parts: stability, brakes, and electronics subsystems.

1. The stability subsystem comprised of a horizontal and vertical suspension. The suspensions were designed to damp irregularities in the track while allowing the pod to turn on a curved track. 
2. The brakes subsystem was a dynamometer designed to test eddy current brake (ECB) designs. The ECB itself used permanent magnets arranged optimally to maximize braking force. We demonstrated our brakes by spinning up a heavy flywheel and engaging the brakes on the flywheel with a pneumatic actuator. 
3. The electronics system was designed to automate the brake dynamometer by using sensor data to transition between states. This was a good way to experiment with automation paradigms we could apply to a full-scale pod in the future.

Apart from the demonstration, our students attended talks given by emerging Hyperloop companies, met other international Hyperloop teams, explored the city, and bonded as a team. 

Our undergraduate and alumni students who participated were Alexander Seligson ME’21, Marc Gottlieb EE’21, Leung Lam ME’23, Jacques Mosseri ME’20, Yaacov Davidowitz ME’22, and Gary Kim EE’23.

For more information on Hyperloop visit our VIP Teams’ website or their website here.