Feasibility of Sliding Sealing Vane for Hyperloop Airlock Application

Muirhead (Student), Samuel and Connolly, Stephen (2020) Feasibility of Sliding Sealing Vane for Hyperloop Airlock Application. Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Glasgow.

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Abstract

Hyperloop is a new proposed form of rapid, intercity mass transit. Building on the principles of magnetic levitation, the vehicles, known as pods, travel along a guideway within a low-pressure tube. The vacuum environment reduces aerodynamic drag at high speeds, allowing Hyperloop systems to operate up to the speed of sound. Due to the pressure differential between the tubes and the atmospheric environment found at Hyperloop stations, an airlock system must be installed. This will allow passengers and cargo to move between the pod internal pressure vessel and the station, without coming into contact with the low-pressure tube environment (Ptube ~ 100Pa) which would be harmful to the payload. This project aims to consolidate the design of a push-through airlock system, in which pods are moved from the vacuum tubes and the platforms using a sealing vane which maintains a temporary seal around the pod body when the main gate valve is open. Further assessment of the sealing vane will act as a feasibility study for the future development of the airlock system as a whole.

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