Love Birds of Death

Purpose.

The death-defying mating dance of bald eagles – including a freefall known as the ‘death spiral’ – makes for a great date idea for thrill seekers. I used natural data and generative design techniques to create a track that will mesmerize and excite.

Ideation.

Roller coasters are unique in that they are one of the few pieces of engineering that when used tells a story. I began planning my coaster by mapping out a story of two bald eagles falling in love, culminating in a terrifying dual death spiral. The original plan was to use the generative design engine in Fusion 360 to create organic support structures.

I used Procreate to sketch how the coaster would feature two separate tracks that dance in and out together until they ultimately intertwined for the big spiral finale. Riders would share the adrenaline and emotion of the ride with another car of strangers, creating an experience that is both exciting and connecting.

Generative CAD.

The processed data from Excel was fed into Rhinoceros via a plug-in called Grasshopper. The data points were combined and filtered in various ways to create coordinate points through which track paths were swept. This served as the basis for the main ‘story track.’ The climatic spiral was generated mathematically from height and pitch inputs.

For the finishing touch, I imported the resulting track and circular ‘nest’ into Fusion 360 and used the generative design engine to create the support structures. The resultant structures were gorgeously organic, fiercely naturalistic, and, of course, wildly impractical. Still, you can see the results for yourself (affectionately dubbed ‘The Cat’ and ‘The Dark Forest’) below!

Challenges.

This project ran into a number of roadblocks, not the least of which was the global COVID-19 pandemic, which forced me to relocate to my home state of Nebraska halfway through the semester. With less time and access to resources, I downsized the coaster from two tracks to just one.

The final major hurdle was importing the files from Rhino into Fusion 360 for generation of supports. For some reason, the step files I was importing kept corrupting into surfaces that would double back on themselves. Unfortunately, there was no easy solution for this. For the sake of a graded deliverable, I worked with my professor to generate organic supports for a portion of the track that would import properly.

In the image below you can see the surfaces that would generate and corrupt the files.

Deliverables.

Roller coaster with generatively-designed supports generated in Fusion 360. Rendered using Keyshot.

Roller coaster with standard supports, generated mathematically in Grasshopper (Rhino). Rendered using Keyshot.

Takeaways.

This project was an excellent exercise in troubleshooting. Many, many things did not work as originally intended, and it was honestly quite fun to work out inventive workarounds. I am very pleased with the final products, and I’m glad to have stuck with the project.

From this project I gained valuable experience in Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, Fusion 360, and Keyshot. Truly, this roller coaster marked a turning point in my abilities as an engineer and a designer.

And I got a good grade in the class, so that was nice.