2 000 2 1 500 1 000 500 10 20 30 40 50 60 Distance (cm) Total force (N) Figure P7.41 de
You have a new internship, where you are helping to design a new freight yard for the train station in your city. There will be a number of dead-end sidings where single cars can be stored until they are needed. To keep the cars from running off the tracks at the end of the siding, you have designed a combination of two coiled springs as illustrated in Figure P7.41. When a car moves to the right in the figure and strikes the springs, they exert a force to the left on the car to slow it down.
Both springs are described by Hooke's law and have spring constants k1= 1600 N/m and k2 = 3400 N/m. After the first spring compresses by a distance of d = 30.0 cm, the second spring acts with the first to increase the force to the left on the car in Figure P7.41.When the spring with spring constant k2 compresses by 50.0 cm, the coils of both springs are pressed together, so that the springs can no longer compress. A typical car on the siding has a mass of 6000 kg. When you present your design to your supervisor, he asks you for the maximum speed that a car can have and be stopped by your device.
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