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Centrifugal Forces - Water slides

Centrifugal Forces - Water slides

Centrifugal Forces - Water slides

(OP)
We are designing the footings and structural steel support for several water slides at a water park in Ontario, Canada.  As you may expect, lateral loads are extremely significant to the footing design.  I am hoping that someone may be able to point me towards a code or guideline that would outline occupant loads that we can use to calculate centrifugal forces around the loops and bends.  We are currently designing for two 200 lbs people sliding down together with zero friction.  Obviously there is friction although we do not know how to evaluate how much friction.  The slides are fibreglass with flowing water.  People slide down without any tube or mat.  At the top the slides have a maximum height of 40'.  If we had a maximum speed exiting the slide we may be able to back track friction losses - is the coefficient of friction constant or does it vary with speed?
  
Our footing sizes are very large due to the height of the slides, wind and centrifugal forces.  We are trying to sharpen our pencils to reduce the footing sizes, although without a code or guideline, and no experience with other water slides, we can not arbitrarily assign a coefficient of friction.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,

Pete

RE: Centrifugal Forces - Water slides

This may or may not be of help.

In bridge design we use the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code CAN/CSA-S6-00.  Here we multiply the design truck weight to the number of design lanes and directly multiply with the nondimensional formula v^2/(127r).

I would be more concerned of the fatigue of the steel connections such as anchor bolts and steel reinforcing bars in the footing, with repeated cycles of loading.

HTH

VOD

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