Sierra Circuits supported and met up with UW Hyperloop at SpaceX event
Building a tube for Hyperloop is no easy feat, according to UW Hyperloop, due to land regulations and funding issues. Despite these challenges, the team participated in the second Hyperloop Pod Competition held in August 2017 at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne.
During Weekend I, most teams attempted to make their pods levitate using magnets, but none succeeded in reaching high speeds. The competition, which focused solely on top speed and successful deceleration of pods, was won by the WARR Hyperloop team from the Technical University of Munich, who reached a top speed of 324 km/h (201 mph). However, specific details about the University of Washington team's pod design and performance in this competition remain undocumented or unavailable in the provided search results.
UW Hyperloop was not selected to race their pod on the Hyperloop track during Competition Weekend II. Despite this setback, the team was impressed by WARR's performance and believed they could achieve similar speeds with fine-tuning.
The UW Hyperloop pod is powered by two batteries, which supply electricity to electric motors. In an effort to increase onboard propulsion, the team switched to a friction-based propulsion system. For Weekend II, the team also made their pod more lightweight and decided to run on wheels instead of passive magnetic levitation.
Sierra Circuits, a sponsor and PCB provider for UW Hyperloop, attended the competition. The company manufactured and assembled a rigid PCB - a custom CAN transceiver and microcontroller boards - for the UW Hyperloop team.
After the first competition, UW Hyperloop worked on optimizing their pod for speed. The team plans to have a new pod for the next competition, aiming to optimize features from the current pod. Sierra Circuits looks forward to continuing to support UW Hyperloop in future competitions.
Despite their efforts, UW Hyperloop estimates that their pod can go 120 mph, significantly lower than the 324 km/h achieved by the winning team. The team acknowledges that Hyperloop will not become a reality anytime soon due to infrastructure challenges.
Weekend III is scheduled for next year, around January or February. The University of Washington Hyperloop team is determined to improve their performance and looks forward to participating in the third part of the competition.
Science and technology play crucial roles in the University of Washington Hyperloop team's efforts to build a pod for the Hyperloop system. They've implemented a friction-based propulsion system to boost onboard propulsion and aimed to optimize features from their current pod for the next competition, aiming to reach speeds that may approach space-and-astronomy levels, like those achieved by the winning team in the second Hyperloop Pod Competition.
