How Elevator Works
In the following, we’ll be discussing a vital topic that’s “How Elevator Works” and will discuss it thoroughly within the article. Okay, as everyone knows what is an elevator; we will see what it will be called by those crazy physicists & engineers in their technical language. They would say – An elevator is a machine which lets us increase or decreases our potential energy. For this lift for home are doing a great job.
Elevators:-
And yes it does that! Suppose you are on floor 1 & you need to go on floor 10, what you need to do is just increase your potential energy, since P.E is directly proportional to the height of the object rose from the ground. This is an example of the law of conservation of energy. You really do have higher P.E on the top floor even if you do not feel energetic (similar to what you feel after having a Red Bull).
So How Do Elevators Or Lifts Work
The car is actually connected to a pulley system through metal or steel cables. The electric motor drives the pulley that pulls up or down the car. We will see one by one component of a lift (called in British language) together with their contributions in working.
Counterweight
You must have observed this one. You can actually see this thing on the ground floor whenever an elevator is on the top floor. When the lift starts coming down, the counterweight starts moving upside & vice versa. But why do we need it?Imagine the lift needs to go up on the tenth floor now being on the ground floor requires one thousand KJ of energy. What these smartasses have done – they have joined a counterweight on the other end of the cables. Now what actually happens is that the electric motor above requires less energy to lift you because the Counterweight is already helping us by pulling us up. This means instead of 1000 KJ, this time you would need less amount of energy like 500 KJ thereby consuming less power. There you go.
The counterweight makes it easier for the motor to raise and lower the car just as sitting on a see-saw makes it much easier to lift someone’s weight compared to lifting them in your arms. Also, a heavy loaded elevator car would be hard to pull up but will race down to the ground while coming down. All thanks to the counterweight, this makes it easier to control the car. A counterweight weighs nearly 1/2 a totally loaded car.
Doors:-
The automatic doors of the car are essential very convenient for handicapped individuals. A typical automatic door system consists of a motor that is connected to an arm which is again connected to a long metal arm that is attached to the door. The door then can slide back & forth on the metal rail. When the motor turns the wheel, it rotates the first arm which results in rotation of second long metal arm too which closes or opens the door. The door is made up of 2 panels that close in on when the door opens & extend when they close. You can visit this link to see the animation. Also several elevators have a motion or ultrasonic sensor that keeps the doors from closing if someone is between them.
Electronic Systems
Basically what they call it the “elevator algorithm” is fed into the lift’s computing system – to stop at floors to that the buttons represent alarms, etc.
Safety
Making the cables from steel strands doesn’t assure a 100 percent guarantee of safety. So Otis elevator or lift (Otis -the one who designed it) had a ratchet system as a backup. Each car ran between 2 vertical guides with durable teeth all the way to the top. If the cables broke, an actual spring-loaded mechanism with hooks sprung outside actually engaging in the metal teeth. So now you are somewhere stuck in between the floors but you are SAFE. These mechanisms were used on Otis elevators few of them have it nowadays.
What If The Teeth Or Hook Breaks Or Bends & The Car Does Not Stop
So, as a second backup, there’s giant hydraulics or gas spring buffer located at the bottom to absorb the impact of the collision. So don’t worry you are safe.
