lily the walrus wrote:Newton's Engineer wrote:The long cylindrical re-bar bundles and augered holes at Carowinds just looked a little atypical to me. I was hoping someone with local civil engineering knowledge might weigh in with an opinion. The rebar for Diamondback was a more typical shallow, broad-base formation suited for compressive loads. Shallow and wide is good for vertical loading. In other words- up and down movements of the load. Think bunny hops or camelbacks.
Longer, deeper and narrow rebar like we are seeing is better for horizontal loading. They are generally made to flex in the horizontal direction. Think hammerheads, helices, and overbanked turns.
Of course all of this is dependent on local soil conditions, the part of the track that is being constructed and local hydrodynamics. Does anyone here know what the typical building standard is for the area?
so what are you thinking--does this indicate a coaster other than B&M hyper to you? or do you think these different building elements have more to do with the actual, um, dirt?
and regarding the jumbo footer- this is my first foray into coaster construction observation, but the first thing I thought when I saw the pic of the footer was "holy c$@#! that sure is a big footer!" so...do you all agree that this is a larger-than-expected footer? and if so, is that significant? (I did read the posts about this earlier, just wondering about other folks' thoughts as well)
anyhow, thanks to everyone for the photos. at last, this is getting really interesting.
Diamondback had a jumbo footer for the hammerhead. BTW what 'jumbo footer' are you talking about? The one in the middle of the dirt field? I think that's for the bottom of the lift hill.
As to the 90* drop, I do believe it is not possible on a hyper. The way the trains are made, they could not bend enough at the top of the lift hill, get vertical, and then pull out in only 230-ish feet. The trains are too long and not made to bend that much.
BTW if anyone wants to see how Diamondback's construction went, I know someone who made a really cool PowerPoint on it that went through the construction. If you'd like me to post it, just let me know and I will because I have a copy of it.
Where's FSUNolez? 
). I tried posting it earlier (twice actually) and it said page cannot be displayed. Then I tried taking out the music and it never would post. Can someone tell me how to make the file smaller so it will post?
I don't have any captions for these, but here you go.
So I took roughly half the pics off the page for hopefully faster loading times for those with *ahem* slower computers. All 40 pics will still be put towards 'the count'.
