For the past century, theme parks all over the world have been battling one another to
construct taller, faster, and more exhilarating thrill machines in order to outshine the competition
and attract the largest crowds.
Driving this battle forward are the engineers and roller coaster designers who have developed
innovative ways to build these towering structures so that they are both safe and reliable.
Over the years, each roller coaster design company has established their own signature
design style with recognizable characteristics that set their coasters apart from the rest.
A few examples include the I-beam design of Rocky Mountain Construction, or RMC, which
consists of a continuous steel I-section with integrated rails;
The truss design of Intamin, which consists of small steel tubes that are welded together
to form a 3-dimensional truss; And the box beam design of Bolliger and Mabillard,
or B&M, which consists of a continuous steel box section that supports two rails using
fin plates.
Although the various design styles are quite unique, they all accomplish the same task
of supporting high-speed roller coaster trains as they hurtle through the air.
If you have ever been to a major theme park, you may have noticed that in addition to having
a unique visual appearance, each track design also produces a distinct sound as the trains
speed over them.
The sound produced by a given roller coaster is directly related to the design of the track,
and of all the various track styles, the box beam design produces one of the loudest and
most recognizable sounds.
The box beam track design developed by B&M has a continuous steel spine that is formed
by a hollow rectangular cross-section.
Steel fin plates are welded to the top of the spine at regular intervals, and these
fin plates support the two rails which are made from circular steel tubes.
When trains travel along the rails at high speeds, vibrations are induced in the track
which propagate throughout the entire cross-section.
These vibrations generate sound that we can hear, and the large hollow box beams actually
amplify the sound due to their size and geometry.
Although the roar of a B&M roller coaster is iconic and downright intimidating, the
noise can be a problem in certain situations, particularly when theme parks are located
adjacent to residential areas.
A prime example of this is Canada’s Wonderland, which is a theme park located in Ontario,
Canada.
The park first opened in the early 1980’s, and at that time it was surrounded only by
farm land.
However, that farm land was gradually overtaken by urban sprawl as the nearby city expanded,
and a large residential area was eventually constructed adjacent to the park.
Now perhaps you shouldn’t move into a house located across the street from a theme park
if you don’t like the sound of roller coasters, but a lot people may have overlooked this
issue at the time.
In 2006, Canada’s Wonderland was purchased by the Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, which
invested millions of dollars into the park to build numerous world-class thrill rides.
The biggest of them all came 2012, when Canada’s Wonderland introduced Leviathan; The tallest
roller coaster that B&M had ever built to date, standing at 93 m tall and reaching speeds
of nearly 150 km/hr.
The giga coaster was constructed right at the front of the park, and it extended out
into the parking lot just a few hundred meters away from the neighboring residential area.
And was this coaster ever loud.
Every time a train dived down the first drop, the sound could clearly be heard by the residents
across the street, and this obviously led to numerous noise complaints.
The park hired an acoustical consultant to perform an assessment of the sound produced
by the ride, and it was determined that something had to be done to quiet down the Leviathan.
In the end, it was decided that the best way to reduce the noise produced by the roller
coaster would be to fill the track with sand.
Since the first drop was the primary culprit of the noise problem, attention was focused
only on this part of the ride.
It was not possible to fill the rails with sand because this would require the rails
to be cut open and welded closed, which would be detrimental to the smoothness of the ride,
however they could cut open and fill the box beams.
Once engineers determined that the structure and its foundations could support the additional
weight, the park moved forward with their plan.
First, a hole was cut into each box beam section of the first drop by workers on a large boom
lift.
Sand was then blown into each section using an aggregate blower, which used compressed
air to deliver the sand to the required height through a long tube.
Since each section of track is sealed at both ends where the individual pieces are bolted
together, sand had to be blown into each track section individually rather than filling the
entire box beam at once.
After the entire drop was filled, the holes in the box beams were welded shut and the
work was complete.
This method of noise reduction was successful, and the noise produced by the roller coaster
was greatly reduced.
The sand inside the track works by damping the vibration of the steel which reduces the
amplitude of the resulting sound waves.
As the steel walls of the box beam vibrate against the sand, the walls push against the
sand and move the individual particles, which transfers energy away from the steel.
This loss of energy translates to a reduction in the amplitude of the vibrations, and the
volume of the sound is therefore reduced.
The same technique has been used for a number of other roller coasters as well, including
Gatekeeper at Cedar Point in Ohio, and Yukon Striker at Canada’s Wonderland.
However, for these two coasters, it was known in advance that noise could be a potential
problem, and so the rails were filled with sand during track fabrication before the roller
coasters were erected.
It’s likely that the engineers decided to fill the rails and not the box beams in these
two cases because a smaller volume of sand is required, and it would have been very difficult
to transport and install the track pieces if they were completely filled with sand due
to the huge increase in weight.
Even though less sand is used, filling the rails alone is still an effective method for
reducing the level of sound produced by a roller coaster.
Filling roller coaster track with sand has been shown to be a good solution to the noisy
roller coaster problem, and it can be used for both new roller coasters as well as existing
roller coasters.
It is a clever yet simple technique, and perhaps we will see it implemented more frequently
in the future.
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