Tata Steel, POSCO Join Forces to Develop Hyperloop Tubes

Tata Steel Europe and POSCO of South Korea plans to collaborate to develop the necessary steel tubes for high-speed hyperloop transport systems, the companies said on Monday.

The Virgin Hyperloop of Richard Branson completed the world’s first passenger ride on its levitating pod system on Sunday, which it expects will transform human and cargo transport while reducing carbon emissions.

In a joint statement, POSCO, Tata Steel Europe, a unit of India’s Tata Steel, said they plan to develop high-quality steel grades needed for huge vacuum tubes that enable high-speed transport using very little energy.

For more than 10 years, POSCO has been conducting hyperloop-related research such as feasibility, design, and structural optimisation of different types of steel tubes, “said Mr. Duk-Lak Lee, POSCO ‘s Head of Technical Research Laboratories.”

In addition to allowing a vehicle to travel in a low-pressure environment, where air is removed to cut resistance, the steel tubes need to maintain stiffness over very greater distances, the firms said.

For their hyperloop project, they neither provided a time frame nor financial details.

A trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes in a hyperloop system, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel. This would be 2X the speed of a commercial jet flight and 4X that of a high-speed train.

Source: IBEF