Swissloop – European Hyperloop Week

Lessons Learnt: We just won the European Hyperloop Week!

As engineers, we at Swissloop want to push the boundaries of transportation technology. For the past seven years, we have built a Hyperloop prototype every year. Our long-term goal is to build passenger capsules which by full levitation, contactless propulsion through electromagnetic linear motors, and low air resistance in low-pressure tubes enable carbon-neutral, efficient transportation at extremely high speeds.

Each year, student teams from around the globe gather at the European Hyperloop Week to convene, compare designs, exchange ideas, and showcase their systems in a competitive framework. The work is assessed by a distinguished jury, and awards are given out based on system quality and reliability, as well as innovation.

We are proud to announce that we won the main prize at last year’s edition of the Hyperloop Week in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

In addition, we are proud to announce that our newest prototype “Bertrand Piccard” was awarded “Best Electrical System” and “Best Sense and Control” by the distinguished jury.

Eurocircuits enabled us to design our own six-layer control boards, which feature both a STM32H7 microcontroller as well as a Lattice FPGA. Being able to utilise FPGAs for our power electronics controls played a big role in winning these awards. Furthermore, the extensive support from Eurocircuits allowed us to design 2 different power electronics system and have a total of 7 systems in our pod as well as multiple spares. Having spares turned out to be crucial during testing as a failure of a single board can stop the entire pod from operating, so quick swapping with spares allows to maximize testing time for the entire pod. In the end, our pool of spares got quite small, so next year we will make sure to have even more spares on hand.

The biggest learning of the season has come during testing of the full vehicle. As we have been approaching higher speeds of up to 80 km/h with our linear switched reluctance motor, the accelerations and vibrations in the vehicle were considerably higher than in past years. Additionally, a new phase-change cooling system was installed for the first time this year, leading the power PCBs to be removed multiple times. The vibrations and repeated removal and re-installation compounded to a considerable amount of mechanical wear on the PCBs.

Be it connectors falling off, fatigue and cracks in soldered connections, or mechanical wear from scratches during installation: The mechanical wear in the power electronics increased the number of issues experienced during testing. Fortunately, we overcame these in the end, but the big learning for the coming years is that we need to better equip our electronics and mounting hardware to be able to withstand the conditions encountered during intense vehicle testing. In the next vehicle, we will certainly make sure that the PCBs are both isolated better from vehicle vibrations and are easier to be removed. Our choice of components on the PCBs will also take resistance to vibrations and other mechanical loads into account.

With that, Swissloop would like to thank Eurocircuits for the sponsorship and are excited to further push the innovation in Hyperloop transport in the coming years!