The FlyWay® Beamcars

If you every day do a little more than is expected from you, it doesn´t take long before people expect even more from you. (Winston Churchill, 1874-1965)

he "FLYWAY®" beamcars are quite unique! They can raise and lower themselves over stops, which thus can be placed anywhere on level ground. They can swivell sideways. They use state-of-the-art obstacle detection systems and communications systems to enable their control. They are the ultimate in near-ground-transportation for humans and goods! List of contents of this page: General 12 sizes of PRT-cars 1 size of GRT-cars Beamcars for passengers and goods 3 kinds of freight carriers 4 sizes of stops Aerodynamic design

1. General

aturally, the "FLYWAY®" beamcars have inherited much of their design from other sources. But SwedeTrack System has enhanced their functionality considerably. This page does not deal with the propulsion cars inside the beams, nor with the lift arrangement, but only with the so-called "carriage". This can be:		a passenger cabin a combined passenger- and cargo cabin a container mover (grappling hooks) a flatcar (for moving motor vehicles and big freight) attachments for dual-mode vehicles emergency and maintenace vehicles other special vehicles which have intrefaces that function with the FLYWAY® system

2. 12 sizes of PRT-cars

he PRT-cabins come in 11 physical sizes, but the biggest cabin has a model where 3 seats have been removed, making 12 sizes in all, as far as passenger-carrying capacity goes. For weight- and/or size-reasons, the biggest cars cannot go everywhere. Thus, beamcars in beam category 1 can of course travel on all beams, cars in beam category 2 cannot travel on the smallest beams, and cars in category 3 would be restricted to the largest beams. In addition, the width of the cars restrict them potentially from travelling everywhere. The seats, as drawn here, are really oversize. More space to move about in the beamcars can easily be created, as explained on another page. Beamcar cabins do not need the heavy frames of road vehicles, since it´s extremely unlikely that beamcars will collide or crash into anything. A body of molded fiber-glass resins will make the cabins a good deal lighter than if they had steel bodies. The interior height is somewhat more generous than with motorcars: The one-seat wide: 1.5 meters high The two-seat wide: 1.7 meters high The three-seat wide: 2.0 meters high All models have lifts. The swivelling capability mentioned on other web-pages is optional. It might not be needed. The doors are preferably of the sliding type. In some situations, the opening doors might have to cover each other. In such a case, the "outer" door would be of the swivel type, as illustrated below.

3. 1 size of GRT-cars

he 32-seat GRT-car shown here is pretty optimal. There is no need to have more modells than this one. It is rather spacious, with standing room, as in buses and trains. It has 2 lifts, for stability reasons, which work in parallell, and they are computer-controlled so that the car stays level during passage of sloping beams. This model cannot (of course) swivel.

4. Beamcars for passengers and goods

n this category, 7 models of beamcars of varying capacity have been created, by simply removing some seats on a selected number of PRT-cars. The idea is that these seats could be removed and replaced at the beamcar service garages, as the need arises. But in so doing, some parameters in the beamcar computers have to be altered so that the beamcars become aware of their new role. The interior height is of course the same as for the corresponding beamcars with seats: The one-seat wide (models 4xxx): 1.5 meters high The two-seat wide (models 5xxx): 1.7 meters high The three-seat wide (models 6xxx): 2.0 meters high

5. 3 kinds of freight carriers

Figure 5:1 The "FLYWAY®" concept includes 3 models of beamcars for handling of goods: Flatcars for transport of motor vehicles, but also other kinds of goods.

Figure 5:2 Grappling hooks for carrying containers. These have to be in 3 classes for varying sizes and weights of the containers to be moved, so that the weight- and width-restrictions of various beam routes are not exceeded. Attachments for specially adapted road vehicles. The cars are carried by way of their roofs, and in the case of electrical road vehicles, power outlets for recharging of the vehicle´s battery during transport would be available.

Figure 5:3

6. 4 sizes of stops

"FLYWAY®" will of course be using the protective cubicles mentioned in "Safety at Stations". These are only used for passenger service (and only in the FLYWAY system), not for goods of any kind. They will be used for PRT-cars as well as GRT-cars. Looking at the figure at right, one realizes that these cubicles have to be adapted to: the length of the vehicles the width of the vehicles . This is no problem. The tricky part is the doors. If one strives for matching doors, i.e. the cubicle-doors should match the cabin doors, one can see from the illustration that we would need 11 models for the PRT-vehicles alone! A station that has to accomodate all kinds of vehicles would thus be wasteful of space. But there are more problems with this approach: Many models of cubicles is expensive to manufacture and store, as compared to a few models Stations with many different kinds of cubicles are space-wasting and inefficient, insofar as some cubicles will be empty while there might be queue of beamcars to others, of different models This approach does not allow the cubicles to adapt themselves to various models of beamcars, with different door arrangements or door sizes (the beamcars might come from different manufacturers) Assymetrical door arrangements on beamcar cabins will not allow them to dock in "the right" cubicles, irrespective of from which direction they come. The cars always have to come positioned the "right" way. The obvious solution to this would be to open practically the whole longsides of the cubicles as the beamcar docks, as shown in the next illustration at right. This is best accomplished by raising the sides of the cubicles straight up in the air, as shown. In this manner, we can make do with only 4 models of cubicles, one for each width of beamcar cabin. There would be 3 models for PRT-vehicles and 1 for GRT-vehicles (the GRT-model is shown further down). Smaller cabins could conceivably use larger cubicles, if no cubicle in the right size is available at the moment, at the station where the vehicle is about to dock. This is not a good idea, however, because it would enable persons to walk around the cabin, inside the cubicle, during docking, and be left behind when the cubicle doors close and the beamcar leaves. An awkward situation for the person concerned, as well as a potential safety risk when the next beamcar arrives for docking. The lower illustration at right also shows 2 small beam cabins in one cubicle. Although there might be place for 2 cabins at the same time, the complications of administering 2 vehicles at the same stop are better avoided. One problem that has to be solved is cubicles with roofs, which fold up when a cabin is about to be lowered, as is shown on the illustration at lower right. These roofs are only really needed in places that can expect huge amounts of snow at times. The best solution to this is to hinge the roof at both ends on protruding attachments, which reach outside the doors, as shown below. When the roof is raised, the path is free for the doors to go up. When the beamcar is about to leave, the cubicle doors go down, the cabin is raised, and finally the roof folds back down, in that order. Station cubicle with foldable roof.

7. Aerodynamic Design

"FLYWAY´s®" vehicles are meant for high speeds, and have to be designed accordingly. To travel at 120 km/hour instead of 40 km/hour, for instance, requires 27 times as much power, just to overcome air resistance. 27 times? Yes, because power requirements increase in proportion to the cube of the speed ratio. Tripple the speed, and the air resistance becomes 3*3*3 = 27 times as big. Air resistance consumes a lot of motive power from moving vehicles. This is why aircrafts on long flights travel on high altitudes, where the air is thinner, despite the fact that: thinner air cannot carry the plane as good it requires a lot of power to climb to higher altitudes. You can read more about aerodynamic resistance on this linked page. Figure 7:3	In addition, there are 2 other factors that increase air resistance, albeit these are directly proportional to the speed, not to the cube of the speed. These are the frontal size of the travelling object and its shape factor (i.e. how streamlined it is). These are factors that promote small sizes of the vehicle cabins. These factors manifest themselves as resistance in front of the vehicle and air drag in the rear. Having agreed that fast vehicles should have pointed fore and aft ends, it is also of interest to know why this nose should be placed at the center of the vehicle´s front. Looking at example 1 in figure 7:2, we find that a highly placed nose forces more air downwards than upwards, creating an upwwards pressure on the front. The corresponding effect tends to create a vacuum in the rear which is stronger at the bottom than at the top, creating a downward pressure. Thus, the whole cabin tends to tip, nose-up, and the more so the higher the speed. The opposite happens in example 2. More air is displaced above the nose than below it, creating a downward pressure. This is how automobiles are generally designed; their (often) long noses tend to press the front down against the road. At the rear we get a lifting force, and, again, the cabin tends to tip nose-down as the speed increases. This might create a slight problem when the beams are used to transport road vehicles, as shown in figure 7:3. We are agreed, presumably, that the cabin should be kept level at all speeds, and this is best accomplished by placing the nose in the middle of the front, as shown in example 3. Apart from this, there are design rules for vehicles that should be adhered to. You can read more about this on the Centre for Sustainable Design website.	Figure 7:1 Figure 7:2