Cable Car as a Civil System
Cable ways are becoming one of the modern urban ways of transportation. This is due to the many advantages that are accompanied with it, such as the possibility of a lower negative environmental impact (away from limited energy resources and powered by clean generated electricity). In addition, it allows transportation processes to exist in a smaller space than other typical systems. The placement of such transportation system along with its boundary conditions are based on the German Design Competition (Schinkel Wettbewerb 2022).
Ontology of the Cable Car System
Purpose
This ontology is developed to represent concepts needed for the conceptual design of cableway transportation systems, mainly focused on the structural engineering part of the conceptual design. This part takes shape after certain parameters about critical structural elements/conditions are known. These elements and conditions are displayed in Table 1 and 2.
Scope
This ontology includes concepts such as cableway physical components, possible materials, and possible cableway uses and their relations. The main emphasized structural element of such transportation system is the loaded rope (cable). This is due to the massive tension forces that will be generated in the rope during traffic. These forces affect the towers and the remaining substructure (foundations). As seen in fig 2 (as previously highlighted in the introduction), the main scope of the design is focused on the span of 1016 meter between the tower and the station Marktplatz.
Intended Use and Users
This ontology is intended to be used as knowledge representation to support the creation of parametric models, specifically targeted at being used for running the needed structural analysis. This analysis helps to check whether the given input (done by the designer) in the parameters (built in the ontology) is proving the structural integrity of the cableway system.The intended end-users are the designers and engineers involved in the design process.
Development of the Ontology
Parametric Model of the Cable Car System
Design Challenge
As previously presented in the ontology project, an instance of the cable car model can be built as a parametric model with certain input parameters that are adjustable. This model would help structural engineers assess the performance of the system based on certain chosen criteria. As mentioned in the first assignment, the system follows the boundary conditions of the German Design Competition (Schinkel Wettbewerb 2022). The design of this system is confronted with transportation challenge using cable cars (gondolas) along a wide span of 1000 meters. In addition to that, a challenge of optimizing the used materials in building the pylon and the two stations.
High Performance Criteria
The performance of the cable system could be described through two main indicators (parameters):
Rope length, we need to distinguish between the span and the rope length. According to many sources on structural practices in designing load bearing cables, the length of the cable must be longer than the span. The chosen rope length is inversely proportional to the resulting horizontal force in the rope. This means, longer ropes will minimize the force. However, the rope length is directly proportional the rope sag . So that means, longer rope might have the advantage of less forces but also the disadvantage of longer rope sag.
Traffic volume (Gondola’s amount/capacity), there is a direct correlation between the load and the applied traffic volume.
Logic of the Parametric Design
The alternatives can take shape through tampering (modification) of the high-performance criteria or the previously presented input parameters to achieve optimized results. The aspects that these results should reflect is dependent on the decision makers responsible of this project. It could be structural safety, monetary, or related to easier construction processes. Upon a general analysis of certain parameters, different alternatives are considered