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Lateral Gs

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Yeti

Roller Poster
I have been using Newton 2 for years now and have noticed I never use lateral Gs on my steel coasters (with the exception of rides like wild mouses). Do other new big steel coasters have them?
 
Laterals are mostly used on wooden coasters to give that "holy **** what am I doing" feeling.

Steel coasters, on the other hand, go for a completely different ride experience, so no, they don't use them. You want to keep it at about 0.9-1.1 anyway.
 
New steel coasters don't necessarily not sue lats anymore. Shambhala's Ampersand has this strange lateral airtime feeling at the very top due to it's banking. There's also the new RMC coasters that use a lot of 90º 'airtime hill' turn things that must produce some lats?
 
If you're designing an overbank (such as Outlaw's wave turn or NTG's tall turns) to have airtime at the peak, then you'll need to use laterals. Other than that, steel coasters tend to shy away from lateral G-forces.
 
Strongest lateral Gs I've experienced on any coaster in recent years are the wild mouses, and those I wouldn't hasten to say go beyond maybe 0.7 Gs?
 
bmac said:
Strongest lateral Gs I've experienced on any coaster in recent years are the wild mouses, and those I wouldn't hasten to say go beyond maybe 0.7 Gs?
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They're not that strong, they're just surprising.

They're especially tame on the Mack wild mice, which, I believe, have shock absorbers on the wheels to decrease the amount of laterals.
 
It's impossible to design a coaster without any lateral forces (sure maybe one with just one seat). There is always variation between all the seats on a train. Most coasters produce lateral force peaks between -1 and +1 g's, sure they all aim at 0 but no coaster that I know of produce 0 g's lateral at all times (in theory rides like Superman: Escape from Krypton, may come close to it, but there are always imperfections).
Some rides like El Toro at Plohn have turns that produce 1 g in some corners for "fun", but those are mainly wooden coasters and wild mouses, but can be used on other coasters as well, badly shaped elements on real coasters easily produces lateral forces over 4 g's, it all depends on what you are looking for.

So aim for 0 g's when designing coasters in NL, but if there are peaks up to +-1 g's then it's not the end of the world (even though some people think that way).
 
Those people who think that lateral Gs are the end of the world obviously won't like Twister @ Knoebels <3
 
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