NEW TRENDS IN SMART ELEVATORS

The increasing pace of urbanization has made tall buildings one of the key needs of modern cities and the essential requirement in these building is the cost effective elevator systems for smooth and safe traffic flow.

What are the factors that factors determine the type of elevator for a building?

There is trafcal (traffic calculation) program to analyse and recommend the suitable capacities, speed and number of lifts required to enable smooth traffic flow with lesser waiting times. The various building types have different needs:

• Residential – Space efficiency, floor traffic and less power consumption
• Commercial – Number of floors and the floor population
• Retail – Tall cars, aesthetics and heavy usage
• Hotels – Tall cars and aesthetics

The main segments cater are residential, hotels, offices, retail, infrastructure and medical. Other building types include leisure and education centres, industrial properties and ships. For instance, the residential segments have less inter floor traffic compared to a commercial segment thus the speed and passenger capacity varies. Whereas, in the health care segment the elevators have to be deeper to take stretchers. Some other examples are:

Hospitals: The key values a customer looks for are reliability, ride comfort, hygienic surroundings and smooth finishes. They prefer more of stainless steel finishes that can be cleaned easily. Features like voice announcement systems, braille buttons etc. are becoming mandatory to ensure accessibility to all kinds of people.

Hospitality: The customers in this segment are very conscious about aesthetics and ride comfort. Access control is an essential feature that this segment looks at.

Airports: The customers want trendy and spacious elevators that can carry a large number of passengers at a time. Apart from hospitality and retail, glass elevators are being sought after in this segment too.

Residential segment: The residential buildings are growing taller and demand for affordable elevators is on the increase. Ride comfort, reliability, safety and affordability are the key requirements of the customer.

Commercial complexes: IT & ITES and banking & financial sectors are the key drivers for this segment. The main requirements here would be effective handling capacity and intelligent elevators linked to the building management system. The Destination Control System (DCS) is also predominantly installed in the commercial buildings to provide better traffic handling.

Malls & Multiplexes: Escalators play an important role in this segment apart from elevators. Requirement of vandal proof material, spacious elevators and ride comfort are the major needs for this segment.

What are the new safety systems being incorporated in elevators?

In recent times, tall buildings have not only become more prevalent but also more complex than ever before. The elevator is the heart of a tall building with an essential requirement of maintaining both safety and efficiency in the design of the escape systems. It is necessary not only to rely on traditional building codes, but to demonstrate safety in our tall buildings. Several issues concerning elevator use in emergencies, such as human behavior, control, training, equipment reliability, and communication, are critical in vertical transportation. The safety features that are ensured in the elevators are:

Door safety

• Car door lock
• Full height fascia plate
• Full height curtain of light
• Door pressure limiter
• Door over speed control
• Door contacts independent for each doors
• Landing door mechanical locking
• Fire rated doors

Some of the other Safety features

• A highly reliable safety gear operated by a reliable over speed governor
• Load weighing device to sense the overload & not allow the lift to start
• Machine brake is designed for 125% of the rated load
• Pit switches in the car
• Terminal limit switches
• Drive time supervision

The challenges and potentials of the Indian elevator market

With tall buildings being the current trend, providing faster speed elevators is the main challenge. The need for innovative and eco efficient products is also increasing with the Green Building concepts gaining significant grounds. Also, affordable housing is one of the largest segments in the country which requires attention. This makes cost effective products, faster delivery, meeting the changing customer requirements and strong R&D the need of the hour.

The industry is still not very mature and the presence of unorganized players both in new business and maintenance continues. Educating the customers and end users on the importance of safety is very important because as a country we tend to take safety for granted.