Interesting article on the TGV and high speed rail in Europe: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,druck-475641,00.html
Gary, the lesser jolt with Eurostars may be due to their streamlined design which tends to displace the airmass more smoothly. The NE Corridor was running Swedish boxcabs when I was riding. Face it, a brick at 100 kph is creating a massive amount of turbulence. I wonder if SNCF/Alstom could get even higher speeds if they redesigned the trainset to have a "coke-bottle" squeeze, like the difference between the USAF F-102 and F-106? Both aircraft were the USAF's first attempt at delta wings, but the -102 was a dismal failure speed wise because its fuselage was a pure tube. The F-106 was essentially the same design except that the tube was squeezed amidships like a Coke bottle. The -102 could barely make Mach 0.9, while the -106 easily made Mach 1.2 with the same power.
Alan, I think young unmarried couples would select that section, at least based on what I saw along the banks of the Seine 35-40 years ago. They didn't appear to require very much vacant space.....:angel:
There is less of an interactive aerodynamic effect on Eurostar because of the duck bill nose. All high speed trains are streamlined but Eurostar in particular is designed to run at high speed in a small bore tunnel. There isn't that much of a jolt from standard TGVs passing at 600km/h either. But note the new TGV POS is slightly less angular than the PSE or Atlantique and looks more like a smoothed out Thalys. The Japanese have done tests with closing speeds of close to 1100km/h with the Chuo Shinkansen maglev. IIRC the deflection was only about 3mm in a levitation gap of 80mm. Cheers David
Interesting. 3:80 would seem to be an insignificant deflection. Though with Maglev one would expect minimal deflection because magnetic repulsive forces increase exponentially as deflection increases, thereby keeping the rail/car gap relatively constant. Whereas with wheeled vehicles, the counter-forces are dependent upon mechanical devices such as springs and shock absorbers which are more difficult to control due to wear and manufacturing inconsistencies, resulting in greater deflections when subjected to outside forces. Your comment about the "duckbill" made me realize that with a Eurostar or TGV-style shape most air deflection would be upwards. Whereas with a boxcab shape, air deflection would be mostly to the sides causing far higher side compression forces to a passing train. Thanks for the insight.....:thumbs_up:
Okay I say this completely tongue-in-cheek (I actually love France, Paris, Cannes and the French-sometimes) <humor>Apparently the train was moving so fast because the engineer was retreating!<rim-shot></rim-shot></humor>