As everyone who loves coasters knows, there is a ton more behind what we see in coaster. There are methods of making rides more thrilling, safe, and cheaper. All these engineering methods are used in many coasters we see today, both wood and steel. We all know a little about what goes on, but there is so much more information. Now, I’ll inform all of you on a bit more information behind what goes on in the engineering of coasters.

Roller Coasters have been around for over a century and have more recently, in the past 40-50 years, been designed and planned out so that everything would work well and the coaster would last. An old example of this would be the Coney Island Cyclone, with its steel structure and wooden track. Now, I will tell you about these engineering methods used by some of the best roller coaster manufacturing companies.

One of the most important parts of a roller coaster is its structure. The basic methods for a structure are to make it cheap, strong, and durable. This is something that is known widely. If we go deeper into the concept of structural strength, we can discover that the roller coaster manufacturing companies all use one thing in their structures. The triangle. The triangle is the strongest shape ever created. Let me demonstrate why: If you take a square, you can move in from side to side, to make some other shapes like a parallelogram and a rhombus. A triange, no matter where a force pushes on it, will not shift in shape. This is why we see so many triangles in coaster’s structures. Even when there are two supports tha make an upside-down ‘V’, they are still strong because the other side of the triangle is the ground.

Some forces acting on structures would be those such as when a coaster train is at the bottom of the hill. This force is pushing the track downward, also known as Compression. Another thing having to do with structures is their foundations, the most important part of a coaster. When a coaster train screams down the first hill, at the bottom, it is exerting a tremendous amount of force on the foundations, since it weighs so much and because of the positive gravitational forces acting on the ride. Because of this, foundations need to be made of reinforced concrete, which is concrete with iron rods inside of it. Why are there the iron rods? At the bottom of the hill, the compression on the foundation from the coaster train could cause the concrete to crack if there was nothing reinforcing it. However, with iron rods, the concrete has a bit more flexibility, so that it does not crack.

Another force from the coaster train that acts on the structure and foundations is when a coaster train will have a lot of speed and be going over a small hill that provides airtime and even negative g’s. When this is happening, the force that is acting on the structure and foundation is called Tension. This can only be described as the structure, ‘stretching.’ To control this force on the foundations, they are dug deep into the ground and once again are made of reinforced concrete because normal concrete would crack under the forces. The structure needs to be stronger for places like these in a ride to also be able to stand such forces.

Some good examples of triangles we would see in roller coasters today are in the structures of Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka. If we go back a bit, we can see that the structures of wooden roller coasters have triangles in their structures always. Wood is weaker than the steel used in modern coasters today, dot he structure must not only be wider, but also involve a lot of triangles. Also some other good examples of triangles as structures is from Bolliger and Mabillard (B&M). In their company’s history of only sixteen years, they have been making their coasters with strong triangular structures. Now, B&M is also widely known for the great, smooth rides their coasters provide. Why? Well, not only does the structure have to do with it, but also, the track.

The track of a ride is also a very important part of the ride. Generally, track needs to withstand the weight of the train and also positive and negative forces from it. Intamin track that usually looks like this is very strong because of the triangles built between the four or three rails. Since Intamin’s track is strong, that means that it can go unsupported for a bit longer than normal coasters before needing a support. This results in much lower costs for the roller coaster to be built. B&M track is another marvel on engineering that is very strong, due to the central spine which holds the rails. Like Intamin, B&M’s track can go unsupported for a while too, making the overall coaster cost cheaper.

Read up next time for The Engineering behind Coasters: Part II: Lift/Launch systems and Trains!