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One safety concern when designing highways is making sure that vehicles can stay

ID: 1530424 • Letter: O

Question

One safety concern when designing highways is making sure that vehicles can stay on the road even in inclement weather. This consideration is perhaps most obvious with curves - if coecients of friction change with rain or ice, cars may slide o the road entirely if not carefully designed. As a result, curves on highways are often banked, or angled slightly upward, in order to allow cars to turn even with low friction forces. A certain segment of a highway is banked, with = 15, and the car shown is traveling out of the page. The turn makes part of a circle with a radius 350m. At what speed will cars be able to make the turn even without any friction (that is, assume that there is no friction)?


Car turni

Explanation / Answer

Given

  

   banking angle is theta = 15 degrees


   radius of the curve is r = 350 m
  

   the speed of the car with which can able to make turn is v = ?


we know that the formula for bankin angle is


       Tan theta = v^2/r*g

       V = sqrt(r*g*tan theta)

       v =sqrt(350*9.8*tan15) m/s


       V = 30.3161 m/s


       V = 109.138 kmph