Cool Kingda Ka Motor Pics!

[coastermaniac]

Why does it have so many motors?

[TheBannedKid]

Its not really practical to have one motor large enough and powerful enough to launch these coasters. Therefore, you use many motors to achieve the same results. Think of it this way, you could either buy the strongest horse ever to pull your 3 ton cart, or you can buy 30 mediocre horses to do the same. Only problem is that you now have to simultaneously control all those motors...each one needs to work at the same time and just as fast as the others.

[okinawaboy11]

So, does Intamin make these..motors? Or does another company supply Intamin with them?

[saxman47]

Intamin doesn't make the motors, in fact, as was posted earlier, Intamin doesn't design each and every part of the launch system. They basically bring everything together in the end, but the individual components are not made by intamin.

[Vallean]

The main drive system of the drum is not that exceptional, it's mainly good engineering and a lot can be quite well simulated too with computer models. The whole cable system is more challenging as it's unusual to use cables at such high speeds and accelerations (excepted maybe in the military domain but I don't know details and you don't launch so many times per hour during the whole day).

A "falling" counterweight isn't useful as the achievable accelerations are low and limited (even if an infinitely heavy mass would be used). The old Schwarzkopf flywheel solution is still better and could be done for large roller coasters. The most elegant solution are linear motors but unless using one (or several) dynamic generator with a huge storage flywheel it's difficult to go much further due to the electrical peak power (=costs, not technical issues). From the linear drive technology there wouldn't be much limitations.

 

Back to Kindga Ka: The reason many hydraulic motors are used is related to the availability of commercial hydraulic motors. There are very powerful single motors but they run very slowly (see e.g. http://www.hagglunds.com), far too slow for the intended application. All high-displacement-volume hydraulic motors are for low-speed high-torque applications, therefore the only commercially available hydromotors with high enough speeds are relatively small (though not that small as they can typically be in the 500-800 kW range), therefore to reach a very high power several motors are used in parallel. Like in any design, engineers first try to find appropriate off-the-shelf products (COTS) before doing a custom design. In this case the gear made by L. Kissling & Co. AG in Zuerich (see my post above) was a full-custom design based on another custom design also made for Intamin AG.

 

As OT, those interested in huge cable drive systems for mines can visit http://www.siemag.de (click on "English") or have a look at this PDF (a 12.8 MW winder, it's in the range of the Kingda Ka launch power but it's continuous, not just a few seconds): http://www.siemag.de/ti-south-deep.download.6597ee4de29d5b2d74177c543f03d813.pdf.