Vertical transportation in buildings

Nowadays, the building industry and its associated technologies are experiencing a period of rapid growth, which requires an equivalent growth regarding technologies in the field of vertical transportation. Therefore, the installation of synchronised elevator groups in modern buildings is a common practice in order to govern the dispatching, allocation and movement of the cars shaping the group. So, elevator control and management has become a major field of application for Artificial Intelligence approaches. Methodologies such as fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, ant colonies, or multiagent systems are being successfully proposed in the scientific literature, and are being adopted by the leading elevator companies as elements that differentiate them from their competitors. In this sense, the most relevant companies are adopting strategies based on the protection of their discoveries and inventions as registered patents in different countries throughout the world. This paper presents a comprehensive state of the art of the most relevant recent patents on computer science applied to vertical transportationConsejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Empresa, Junta de Andalucía P07-TEP-02832, Spain

Fire Protection and Life Safety Engineering Analysis- Center for Science and Mathematics

The Life Safety and Fire Protection systems in Cal Poly’s Center for Science and Mathematics (CSM) were analyzed and evaluated in this project, according to the requirements of the applicable codes and pertinent standards. The evaluation was conducted through a prescriptive-based approach, in conjunction with a performance-based approach. On one hand, the prescriptive-based approach considered the analysis of the Structural Fire Protection and Means of Egress in the building and the existing Fire Detection/Alarm and Fire Suppression Systems. On the other hand, the performance-based approach included an Egress Analysis, which assessed the Required Safe Egress Time (RSET) and the Available Safe Egress Time (ASET) for the occupants to evacuate the building’s atrium safely in the event of a fire. The Egress Analysis was performed using hand calculations and the PATHFINDER computer software, along with data collected from previous studies. The tenability conditions within the building’s atrium were evaluated for different fire scenarios and smoke management alternatives, using the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) software. Finally, some recommendations were appended to improve the performance of the fire safety systems, based upon the outcomes and conclusions obtained in this report

Centennial Station- Evaluation

The purpose of this analysis is for completion of FPE 596 Culminating Experience in Fire Protection Engineering course in the Fire Protection Engineering Program at California Polytechnic State University. This analysis has been compiled using previous design courses evaluating the egress analysis, suppression design, alarm and detection design, smoke control system design, and structural fire protection. The context of the courses studied both prescriptive and performance based design approaches. The building chosen for the analysis is Centennial Station located approximately 15 miles south of Denver, Colorado at 12154 East Easter Avenue, Englewood, CO 80112. The facility was designed specifically for use by the government in 2008 and constructed throughout 2009. The facility is a 92,041 square feet, four-story, freestanding building consisting primarily of B, E, and S-1 occupancies. Analysis of Centennial Station was completed with only the floor plans of the building. Mechanical, electrical, fire protection, and life safety drawings were not available during the completion of this analysis. The attached floor plans showing fire protection systems were created by Brandon Huffman and are not indicative of what is present at the building. Where noted certain assumptions were made to complete the design of the systems. All images of the systems are shown as a representation of systems installed in Centennial Station, but are not of the actual systems installed in the building. The fire alarm and suppression systems were designed using prescriptive methods utilizing applicable NFPA codes. The smoke control system design provided in this analysis is hypothetical with information known about the building; the hypothetical system design is based performance-based design and industry best practices. Egress analysis was performed using prescriptive based design, as well as performance based evaluation. All systems were evaluated together to analyze the required safe egress time versus the available safe egress time, the analysis was used to determine the effectiveness of the design of all operating systems including alarm activation, sprinkler activation, effectiveness of smoke exhaust, and occupant travel paths and times. Analysis of the building found that the prescriptive based designs of the alarm and suppression systems met the minimum code requirements for the building as shown in the drawings in Appendix C. Additionally, the building use and construction type was appropriate for the building height and area as constructed. In general, the egress components were code compliant with the exception of one instance of an exceeded common path of travel on the third floor in Open Office 312. Fire Dynamics Simulator was used to model the smoke exhaust system; it was determined that the smoke control system is adequate for the building as designed in this analysis

Fire and Life Safety Evaluation of an Assisted Living and Memory Care Center

This culminating project has been submitted as part of the graduate program in Fire Protection Engineering at Cal Poly. It documents an Assisted Living and Memory Care Center’s compliance with applicable fire safety prescriptions contained in the 2019 California Building and Fire Codes (CBC and CFC). Performance-based methods incorporating deterministic design fires were then used to verify that the final building design and operating procedures met the life safety needs of its unique occupants. The building under analysis was a 45,000 sq. ft, two-story, 58-bed residential care facility for the elderly. Occupants were all 60 years or older without acute medical conditions but with potential mild to severe mobility, sensory, and cognitive impairments. The fire- resistance-rated light-frame wood structure, its compartmentalized interior layout, and its active fire protection systems were found to satisfy the code provisions adopted by the local authority having jurisdiction. These included plentiful egress and exit capacity, localized fire and smoke containment, early smoke detection, audible and visual notification at levels appropriate to the occupants, and complete quick-response sprinkler coverage for life and property protection. The priorities of the performance-based analysis were to check the adequacy of these code-compliant fire protection features, as well as to support housing accessibility and to inform staff training. These required realistic fire models to verify available safe egress times (ASETs), which were shorter for these residents than the general population due to their lower tolerances for heat and smoke exposure. Design fires took guidance from NFPA 101 Life Safety Code and the author’s research on the history of fatal care home fires. All fires were placed in residential wings using heat release data from calorimetry tests of residential furniture and mixed natural/ synthetic hydrocarbon contents in staff supply closets. Initial growth rates were between fast (0.0469 kW/s2) and ultrafast (0.1876 kW/s2), with peak heat release rates and embodied energies appropriate to the fuel packages but ultimately determined by ventilation conditions. Model results supported the existing building design but showed that additional fuel control, compartmentation, detection/ notification, and automatic suppression would strengthen care staff’s response to and management of fires. Specifically, all rooms that communicate with residential corridors should have smoke detection and be fitted with door self-closers, following the findings of Performance Design Fires ‘B’ and ‘C.’ Where clients are housed also impacts their fire safety, so their facility intake forms/ health assessments should be used to guide placement— per Performance Design Fire ‘A,’ Assisted Living residents with the greatest cognitive, sensory, and locomotion disabilities should be housed closest to the lobby to receive prompt aid and minimize burns and smoke inhalation. These vulnerabilities also mean that sprinkler protection should be designed following the more rigorous commercial NFPA 13 standard as opposed to low- rise residential NFPA 13R, which was demonstrated in Performance Design Fire ‘D.’ Performance Design Fire ‘A’ was a nighttime living room furniture fire typical of all 40 Assisted Living dwellings. The occupant was assumed to be sleeping in the bedroom and not intimate with ignition; they were also capable of self-evacuation. Their required safe egress time (RSET) included a delay in waking to their low-frequency smoke alarm and traversing their unit to the corridor door, which totaled two minutes. At this time, the visibility through smoke was well below what would normally be accepted for design. The gasses at six feet above finished floor in the egress path were already too hot to move through (120°C), so the evacuee had to stoop, crouch, or even crawl, depending on the effectiveness of the sprinkler suppression. Since the sprinkler did temper heat, the asphyxiant fractional effective dose for incapacitation (FEDtot = 0.1) became the limiting tenability criteria; an especially respiratory-sensitive evacuee who took longer to find their door would have been incapacitated at two and a half minutes, but staff was expected to intervene by then. The slim margin for human error suggests that this scenario would benefit from a probabilistic assessment that includes ignition and suppression. A deterministic solution would be to regulate the flame spread and heat release of the furniture that residents bring in or are provided with. In scenarios ‘B’ and ‘C,’ a mixed cellulose/ plastics design fire was placed in staff supply closets with doors open to the residential hallways in the Assisted Living and Memory Care wings. The door in Performance Design Fire ‘B’ was self-closing, so wedging it open represented an n = 1 managerial failure; the closet sprinkler was operational. The nighttime RSET of Assisted Living residents to reach an adjacent smoke compartment was three to four minutes, depending on their disability. The ASET was the time for the smoke layer to descend to six feet in the corridor, which was the only evacuation route. This occurred by a minute and a half for 44% of the dwelling units along the hallway, which was the earliest staff was expected to arrive and close the fire room door. Since visibility at the staff entrance to the corridor was below two meters, and required crouching or crawling to access the room, closing the fire room door was not a certainty. This scenario necessitated partial or full defend-in-place in the Assisted Living wing. A similar result was found for the Memory Care wing in Performance Design Fire ‘C.’ A faulty sprinkler was an n = 1 device failure in this scenario because the closet door was not required to be self-closing. Occupants with dementia/ MNCD were assumed to be incapable of self-evacuation, and an RSET was not calculated for full staff evacuation of the wing, but it would have been much longer than the minute and a half ASET it took for smoke to descend to six feet in most of the corridor. Performance Design Fire ‘D’ looked at ignition within a Memory Care dwelling and NFPA 13’s requirement for sprinklers in clothes closets, which goes beyond NFPA 13R. This model also assumed an n = 1 device failure of the sprinkler. In contrast with Design Fire ‘A,’ the RSET was the time it took for an attendant to rescue the fire room occupant. This was just over a minute; since the fire was shielded from the main room sprinkler by the closet door, the fire burned uncontrolled, and the heat became intolerable overhead (200°C) after a minute and a half. This slim margin for attendant error echoes the conclusions of Design Fire ‘A.’ A summary of ASETs versus RSETs and additional observations can be found in Chapter 11. Facility operator responsibilities, including fuel control, housekeeping, fire protection systems maintenance, and emergency preparedness plans, can be found in the fire safety plan in Chapter 12. These are primarily based on the requirements of the CFC and the findings of this report\u27s prescriptive and performance chapters

Evaluating a holistic energy benchmarking parameter of lift systems by using computer simulation

At present, there are benchmarking parameters to assess the energy performance of lifts, e.g. one in Germany adopted by VDI (4707-1/2), one internationally published by ISO (BS EN ISO 25745-2:2015), and the other in Hong Kong adopted by The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government. These parameters are mainly checking the energy consumed by a lift drive without considering real time passenger demands and traffic conditions; the one in Hong Kong pinpointing a fully loaded up-journey under rated speed and the two in Europe pinpointing a round trip, bottom floor to top floor and return with an empty car, though including energy consumed by lighting, displays, ventilation etc. A holistic normalization method by Lam et al [1] was developed a number of years ago by one of the co-authors of this article, which can assess both drive efficiency and traffic control, termed J/kg-m, which is now adopted by the HKSAR Government as a good practice, but not specified in the mandatory code. In Europe, the energy unit of Wh has been used but here, Joule (J), i.e. Ws, is adopted to discriminate the difference between the two concepts. In this article, this parameter is evaluated under different lift traffic scenarios using computer simulation techniques, with an aim of arriving at a reasonable figure for benchmarking an energy efficient lift system with both an efficient drive as well as an efficient supervisory traffic control

Modelling of a rope-free passenger transportation system for active cabin vibration damping

Conventional vertical passenger transportation is performed by lifts. Conventional traction-drive electrical lifts use ropes to transfer the rotational motion of an electrical motor into a vertical motion of the cabin. The vertical passenger transportation system discussed in this paper does not use any ropes, the motor directly provides a driving force, which moves the cabin. This new propulsion is realized through an electrical linear motor. The use of the linear motor requires a new design of the passenger transportation system (PTS), which includes reducing the weight of the car through lightweight construction. The reduced stiffness of the lightweight design renders the construction more vulnerable to vibrations. In order to improve ride quality of the transportation system it is necessary to develop new concepts to damp the vibrations. One way to increase stiffness characteristics of the system is to introduce active damping components to be used alongside passive damping components. It is essential to derive a dynamic model of the system in order to design and also later control these damping components in the best possible way. This paper describes the fundamental steps undertaken to derive a dynamic model for designing and controlling active damping components for the new type of vertical PTS. The model is derived as a Multi-Body System (MBS), where the connections between the bodies are modelled as spring damper elements. The derivation of the MBS is demonstrated on a transportation system, consisting of three main components: a sledge, holding the rotor of the linear motor; a mounting frame, which is used to provide support for the cabin; and the actual cabin. The modelling of the propulsion system, thus the electrical part of the PTS, will not be the focus of this work

Implementation of lockout/tagout (LOTO) methodologies on production lines

With machines getting increasingly more complex, as technology advances and automation becomes an increasingly important aspect of all types of manufacturing processes, so does the complexity of engaging with machinery increase, which can lead to increased risk, and injury rates. This is particularly relevant in the packaging industry, where competition and the market’s changing demands require that package manufacturers remain flexible and efficient, which makes maintenance, changes, and improvements to machinery a common occurrence. It is then important to promote safety in the workplace, by implementing safety standards and methodologies. One such methodology is known as LOTO, or Lockout Tagout, which aims to control hazardous energies by developing blocking methods for the energies present in industrial equipment and to develop safety procedures to instruct workers on how to perform their tasks safely. In this context, this dissertation aims to use LOTO methodologies to develop a safety procedure for three different machines, located in a factory specializing in the manufacturing of metal cans used for the packaging of various products. To achieve this goal, some preliminary work was done to develop the resources needed for the implementation of LOTO methodologies, such as the improvement of the tagging system that identifies the equipment and the energy blocking points, and the acquisition of the equipment needed to correctly block and dissipate the energy present in the machines. Following these tasks, each of the three machines was individually analyzed, documenting the tasks performed by workers on the machine and the energies involved in those tasks, as well as the implementation of the needed changes and improvements. Once the needed information was gathered, a safety procedure was developed and implemented for each machine, showcasing the documented tasks, along with the energies that need to be blocked, and a guide on how to perform each task safely. The implemented changes and safety procedure seemed not to slow down the duration of tasks and were able to reduce the injury rates seen on the machine. However, due to the time constraints placed on this dissertation, and the large timescale needed to correctly evaluate rates of injury, it is suggested to collect more data after implementation of the safety procedures for a more robust conclusion.Com o avanço da tecnologia, e com a automação a tornar-se num aspeto cade vez mais importante em todos os tipos de indústrias, todos os dias as máquinas tornam-se também cada vez mais complexas, o que leva a um aumento na dificuldade e complexidade inerente em interagir com estes sistemas mecânicos, o que pode levar a um aumento nos riscos e no número de lesões. Este facto é particularmente relevante na indústria de embalagens, onde a competição e as mudanças nos requisitos do mercado exigem que os fabricantes permaneçam flexíveis e eficientes, o que torna a manutenção, alterações e melhorias em máquinas uma ocorrência comum. É então importante promover a segurança no local de trabalho, através da implementação de normas e metodologias de segurança. Uma destas metodologias de segurança é conhecida pelo nome de LOTO, ou Lockout Tagout. Esta metodologia visa controlar as energias perigosas, implementar métodos de bloqueio das energias presentes nos equipamentos industriais, e desenvolver procedimentos de segurança para instruir os trabalhadores sobre como realizar as suas tarefas com segurança. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo utilizar as metodologias LOTO para desenvolver um procedimento de segurança para três máquinas diferentes, localizadas numa fábrica que se especializa no fabrico de latas metálicas utilizadas em diversos produtos. Para tal, foram realizados alguns trabalhos preliminares de forma a desenvolver os recursos necessários para a implementação de metodologias LOTO, tais como a melhoria do sistema de etiquetagem que identifica os equipamentos e os pontos de bloqueio de energia, e a aquisição dos equipamentos necessários para corretamente bloquear e dissipar as energias presentes nas máquinas. Em seguida, cada uma das três máquinas foi analisada individualmente, documentando quais tarefas são executadas pelos trabalhadores na máquina, e quais as energias envolvidas em cada tarefa, bem como implementadas as mudanças e melhorias necessárias. Uma vez reunidas as informações necessárias, foi desenvolvido e implementado um procedimento de segurança para cada máquina, apresentando as tarefas documentadas, juntamente com as energias que precisam de ser bloqueadas, e um guia sobre como realizar cada tarefa com segurança. As mudanças implementadas e o procedimento de segurança pareceram não aumentar a duração da realização das tarefas, e conseguiram reduzir as taxas de lesões observadas nas máquinas. No entanto, devido às limitações do tempo impostas nesta dissertação, e à grande escala de tempo necessária para avaliar corretamente as taxas de lesões, sugere-se recolher mais dados após a implementação dos procedimentos de segurança para obtenção de conclusões mais robustas

A study into the influence of the car geometry on the aerodynamic transient effects arising in a high rise lift installation

One of the main goals in designing a high-speed lift system is developing a more aerodynamically efficient car geometry that guarantees a good ride comfort and reduces the energy consumption. In this study, a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed to analyse an unsteady turbulent air flow around two cars moving in a lift shaft. The paper is focused on transient aerodynamic effects arising when two cars pass each other in the same shaft at the same speed. The scenarios considered in the paper involve cars having three different geometries. Aerodynamic forces such as the drag force that occur due to the vertical opposite motions of the cars have been investigated. Attention is paid to the airflow velocity and pressure distribution around the car structures. The flow pattern in the boundary layer around each car has been calculated explicitly to examine the flow separation in the wake region. The results presented in the paper would be useful to guide the lift designers to understand and mitigate the aerodynamic effects arising in the lift shaft