Experimental Verification of Effects in an Emergency Stop by Installation of Magnetorheological Fluid Damper to an Elevator

Abstract

In the countries sailing with an economic tailwind, many skyscrapers are going up. These buildings require systems of high-speed, safety, and comfortable elevators for its speedy vertical transportation. If the drives of elevator fail, an emergency stop device is supposed to work immediately for saving passengers lives in the elevator cage, because the elevator has outrageous potential energy to the ground level and kinetic energy. Its dangerousness is nothing compared to that in railways as surface transport. In order to reduce impact force to passengers in emergency stoppage, the authors had already proposed a safe and dependable magnetorheological fluid (MRF) semi-active damper (i.e., MRF damper) put between an emergency stop device and an elevator cage. In this paper, in order to evaluate the effects of the MRF damper, we would like to make up a test installation, which is composed of an MRF damper, a spring, an elevator cage, linear servo mechanics with a ball screw for generating the brake force of emergency stop device, sensors, and a digital controller with Labview. In addition, we would like to verify the validity of our system by many experiments.