Swissloop Sets New Standards at European Hyperloop Week 2024

Swissloop is a student competition team taking part in the European Hyperloop Week, which, contrary to what the name suggests, has teams from all over the world competing in. From Canada & the US to – as the name suggests – Europe all the way to India & Indonesia. Each year these teams design, build and demonstrate a hyperloop prototype system, with which they compete in the competition. These systems are evaluated by their full scale compatibility, meaning how well such a system could be implemented in the real world. This means that along with speed, also cost, efficiency, safety and other things are heavily considered.

This year, Swissloop aimed to build the most full scale compatible hyperloop system of all 22 competing teams. The 2024 Swissloop system for the first time ever for a student team worldwide features a seat within the pod, the hyperloop vehicle, in which an actual person can fit in and ride along. Furthermore, also for the first time for a student team, instead of a traditional aeroshell, which has little to no functionality apart from aerodynamics, a structural cabin was built that not only provides the structures necessary for all interior parts, but is also fully vacuum tight and is built in a round, aerodynamic shape. This was achieved by utilizing similar techniques as airplanes do, namely using an aluminum frame covered with glued and bolted aluminum sheets providing the stability and the skin as one part.

Because energy consumption is a main challenge for hyperloop systems, as there is no contact with the rails and thus also no easy external power delivery like in trains, Swissloop aimed to decrease the amount of energy that needs to be stored on board of the vehicle. This was realized by constructing a secondary motor on the track, a so-called booster, which in a full scale system would be constructed at the beginning of the track and has the job of accelerating the vehicle to its travel speed. This way, the energy needed to accelerate the vehicle can be drawn from the grid instead of the vehicle. This reduces the amount of batteries necessary on the vehicle and thus also decreases the mass of the vehicle, making the whole system more efficient. Furthermore, the linear motor of the vehicle was redesigned in order to achieve high efficiency.

Of course, such a complex system needs advanced electronics in order to operate reliably and safely. For this purpose Swissloop has designed over 14 unique types of PCBs, most of which are utilized multiple times in the system. Eurocircuits has been a reliable partner in manufacturing these PCBs and has thus enabled Swissloop to achieve its goals.

In the 2024 edition of the European Hyperloop Week, which took place in July 2024, Swissloop was able to win three awards. Namely the Vacuum Technologies Award, recognizing the success of the team in not only designing a prototype, which is vacuum tight in a scalable way, but also proving its design in a real one hour vacuum test, during which an environmental pressure of under 5 Millibar was withstood. Further, Swissloop won the Award for the Most Scalable System, which shows that Swissloop was successful in creating the most future proof system of all the teams competing. At last, Swissloop also secured 3rd place in the overall complete system competition firmly placing it among the world’s best hyperloop student teams.

For more information please visit the Swissloop website.