Reinventing the Elevator
Traveling more than 500 meters or 100 floors in a continuous elevator trip is challenging and doesn’t really make sense using conventional technology. Therefore KONE has developed a new innovative tripping technology KONE UltraRope™.
Modern construction materials and equipment allow erecting extremely high buildings. However, the higher is the skyscraper, the more interchanges has one to make while rising from the first to the top floors. One of the problems in the organization of the continuous movement of the elevator upwards from the ground or underground level becomes the rope weight, limiting the elevation way of the cabin. At that point, the weight of the several kilometers of rope needed to hoist the elevator becomes an obstacle. More ropes are needed just to lift the weight of the ropes. Limits set by ropes are a major reason why most very tall buildings have sky lobbies served by shuttle elevators from the ground. Separate elevators take people higher from these lobbies in the sky.
In a building this tall, the moving masses of a single elevator hoisted with steel ropes can be some 27,000 kilograms. This is equal to fitting ten off- road vehicles inside the shaft and shifting them along with the elevator. Using KONE UltraRope for hoisting in a similar shaft, the moving masses are around 13,000 kilograms, or about the weight of four off-road vehicles.
In the future, KONE Ultra-Rope will enable elevator travel all the way from ground floor to penthouse in a kilometer- high building in one continuous journey. It became possible thanks to KONE, which introduced groundbreaking technology with its KONE UltraRope. Made of a carbon fiber core surrounded by a unique highfriction coating, the rope weighs only about 19 percent of a similar strength conventional steel rope.
KONE UltraRope is compatible with all other KONE high-rise solutions so it can be used to replace conventional ropes in old buildings. And with the new technology, the higher you go, the bigger the benefits. For example, the energy savings for a 500-meter elevator journey are around 15 percent versus conventional rope. For an 800– meter journey the savings are over 40 percent.
Put simply, the new technology enables massive cuts in the deadweight that is moved up or down every time someone hops into a high-rise elevator. Less deadweight means smaller energy consumption and operating costs.
“We are on the brink of something really big. In a sense, we have reinvented the high-rise elevator,” says Antti Ikonen, UltraRope project manager.
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Materials provided by KONE