The world's top steel and mining business, ArcelorMittal, and Zeleros, a European startup creating the scalable hyperloop, an ultra-high-speed transportation system for both people and commodities, have conducted tests to examine the behavior of steel grades for the hyperloop's best usage.
At ArcelorMittal's Rail Excellence Centre in Spain, a testing facility in the shape of a spinning wheel that can reach linear speeds of up to 500 km per hour has been designed and constructed to test how certain steel perform in ultra-high-speed conditions before testing on a scaled-down hyperloop track. The findings offer information to further improve the choice of the best steels for usage in hyperloop systems, with safety, energy efficiency, affordability, and scalability serving as the primary determining factors.
Since 2017, Zeleros and ArcelorMittal have collaborated. Since then, specialists from the two businesses have collaborated to create research that examine how materials perform under high-speed settings, assessing the effects of essential elements for the hyperloop technology, such as the electromagnetic properties of steels (hyperloop designs propose the use of magnetic levitation). As part of the larger co-engineering effort between Zeleros and ArcelorMittal, ArcelorMittal's rails business in Europe, ArcelorMittal Europe, Long Products, Rails and Special Sections, has produced new products with increased guiding and braking performance.
In addition to the hyperloop, ArcelorMittal has taken part in research on materials for other applications created by Zeleros, like the SELF (Sustainable Electric Freight-forwarder), which was designed to move standard intermodal containers faster, automatically, and sustainably within ports. The test track for this application is currently being built in the Spanish port of Sagunto.
The materials and information on this article have been prepared or assembled by Viet Nam Steel and are intended for informational purposes only
