Launch of Kanonen, Liseberg

Launching a rocket coaster

(See also a description of the launch of Kanonen at Liseberg.)

The launch, itself, can be assumed to be an adiabatic process, where

For a diatomic gas, like nitrogen, used for the launch,

=1.4. The work done by the gas during adiabatic expansion is given by

According to the gas law, pV/T=constant, and this expression can be used to relate the temperature during the adiabatic expansion to the pressure or the volume.

The relations above can be expressed in terms of dimensionless quantities depending on the ratio V/V_o. The maximum possible work for an adiabaticlally expanding gas would be W_o=p_oV_o/( gamma -1). which depends on the initial pressure and volume Figure 1 shows the variation of work, pressure and temperature with the relative volume increase.

Figure 1.

See also a comparison of data for launch coasters.

http://fy.chalmers.se/LISEBERG/KANONEN/launch.html
2005-07-25 AMP