A scary shake

Transfers on high speed sections are not a good idea at all. Look at any of the sections with removeable track like Wicked Twister or Millennium Force. They are majorly overbuilt with good reason. If a transfer in a station fails, it will more than likely just cause a quick stop and no damage. If one of those high speed sections fail, people die.

Metallurgically speaking, the sway on the tower with the two supports for each does not cause excessive fatigue wear. If you look at steel and weldments on the track and support structure, they are pretty strong and ductile. If it does fail, it will take a long time and fail weld by weld. That is exactly why they inspect the rides every day. If they find any cracking, they get a qualified welder for the particular weld needed and fix the weld.

Back in 2002, both towers were subject to excessive fatigue wear. The track was subjected to high torsion, viberations and much higher sway strain. At first, they cut off the round tube between the running rails and replaced them with much heavier and larger sized square tube. The fatigue weas was still excessive. They added those supports to both towers and this reduced the three conditions that the track was subjected to that I listed above. They work pretty well.

Well, You seem Quite the expert, aren't you. I took physics in high school but that was still WAY over the head, any chance you might explain in english?

Force freak, there are lots and lots of engineers on this site. Don't even try to understand it. Just settle back and let your eyes glaze over. ;)

Jump to Conclusions said:
Back in 2002, both towers were subject to excessive fatigue wear. The track was subjected to high torsion, viberations and much higher sway strain. At first, they cut off the round tube between the running rails and replaced them with much heavier and larger sized square tube. The fatigue weas was still excessive. They added those supports to both towers and this reduced the three conditions that the track was subjected to that I listed above. They work pretty well.

The simplified version:

When built, the tower parts of the track were bending, twisting and shaking too much for their own good. As a result, they've beefed-up the structure of the track, which has helped reduce said bending, twisting and shaking.

^ but still allows the dissipation of energy through swaying.

Yeah, that's what I said. ;)

Haha.. off topic, but i thought this was about scary shakes like in RCT

Wicked Twister's shaking kind of got me the first time I saw it, but it did not turn me away.

If you want to see a scary shake, look at Rattler at Six Flags Fiesta Texas, that has a scary shake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OAs0L-26qY at about 3 min is the shakage.

Gosh, that really does shake.

^And people think WT shakes bad. Whenever someone complains about WT shaking, they should just show them that clip.:)

Or just walk on over to TTD. The pull-outs on the tower violently shake after the train passes over. After the supports were added, WT's towers don't shake nearly as much as they use to.

If it's wood and it doesn't shake, it may break. The designers of these coasters know what they are doing.

Most of the time.

MrScott

I have never even noticed WT shake at all.

I wouldn't really call that a shake on Rattler, that's more of a whole track sway.

WT wiggles, not shake.

MrScott

Yeah, the engineers know what they are doing. That is exactly why WT had brittle mode cracking on the track structure...

Given the visible oscillations of the track alone, no damage would have occured. It was the combination of the force of the sway, the higher frequency oscillation resonance, and other factors that caused the cracking. The supports added later on Wicked Twister are used for oscillation dampening rather than structural support.