Development of technologies for mountain trams driven through sharp curves

Abstract

The mountain tram is an environmentally friendly transportation system that is driven wirelessly on an embedded track constructed on former mountain roads. While it has a number of strong points, including being able to be driven in spite of a frozen road, some difficulties are caused on sharp and steep tracks. In this study, after possible technical problems were defined in mountain trams driven on sharp and steep tracks, design solutions for the coupling structure of bogie and car body were proposed. In addition, a prototype was made and its performance was tested to verify the solution. Since the distance difference of inner and outer rails on the sharp curve is severe enough to interrupt running, independently rotating wheels with different angular speeds were developed and applied. To prevent derailment due to large attack angle and lateral force caused by the previous vehicle in a 2-bogie-1-carbody design on a sharp curve, a 1-bogie-1-carbody vehicle was designed and applied. A prototype 1-bogie-1-carbody vehicle with independent rotating wheels was made to prove the performance during test drives on a small track. To absorb the large rotations of 3 degrees-of-freedom between the car bodies of a mountain tram driven on the steep curved track, a coupler was designed. After a small scale prototype was made, the performance was verified through a function test.