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"Going Up" At 45 Mph: Hitachi To Deliver World's Fastest Elevator
Zothecula (1870348) writes "Hitachi has announced that it's installing the world's fastest ultra-high-speed elevators in the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre skyscraper in Guangzhou, China. Making up two out of a total of 95 elevators in the building, Hitachi says the new lifts use a range of technologies to produce record-breaking speeds of 1,200 m/min while still meeting the necessary standards of safety and comfort."
First!
I imagine these will be great for express elevator to the upper floors, but bad for short hops, because it probably takes lots of time to start stop.
High speed elevators are stupidly expensive.
I was looking at apartments a while back and at one of the buildings there was some ongoing construction.
Somehow I ended up getting shown around by one of the head contractors who told me that the building was supposed to have four medium speed elevators, but they got permission to knock it down to 3 high speed elevators, which would move the equivalent # of people per arbitrary unit of time.
The kicker was that those 3 elevators were about 1/4th the total budget of the entire building.
So based on that, I'm guessing that TFA's 95 elevators are a respectable portion of the price for that new tower in China.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You know you have a really fast elevator when it gets its own theme song and maybe a TV show or movie. Maybe something like "Smokey in the Elevator," or "The Elevators a Hazard."
I wonder if Rosco P. Coltrane is available? He might work as sheriff.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
45mph doesn't actually sound very fast to me, especially going down.
I RTFA, and all it says is 440 meters in 43 seconds. I'd like to know the acceleration profile for this thing, it sounds like fun!
John
Hitachi To Deliver World's Fastest :D
Elevator :(
There's going to be lots of crying babies!
46137
What does the acceleration vs time graph for an elevator look like, before it's reached 'cruising' speed?
If the elevator accelerated at a constant rate, I found that its acceleration would only be ~1.99m/s^2 or 0.2g's. I used the fact that it travels 440 meters in 43 seconds and its cruising speed will be 20m/s (all taken from TFA). According to those numbers, it would accelerate for the first 21 seconds, cruise for 1 second, and then decelerate for the last 21 seconds.
I want my high speed elevator to descend at a rate *just* fast enough to have me hovering six inches off the floor, which should be made of glass.
go your ears!
This building is only 530m high. Even at a 30mph you could do that in about 20 seconds and thats assuming you're going all the way from the bottom to the top. For that distance this lift would save around a whole 5-6 seconds (not counting acceleration time). BFD.
Sounds like an expensive technology showcase rather than something that will be a major extra benefit.
I wonder how they avoid the popping. The article says that they use some kind of fancy pressurization system for that, but you still have to change altitude in a short amount of time, so how do you "avoid" that pressure change? You could pressurize the whole building, but then the windows couldn't open, you couldn't have a terrace (except if it had an ear-popping airlock), and there would be a constant strong draft from top to bottom unless you kept the floors sealed airtight (which is kind of hard to do if you have things like elevators)
I imagine the best they can do, is spread out the pressure change over the slightly longer period that includes the slower parts of the journey and the wait for the doors to open, but that won't make such a huge change.
All we need now is to speed up 3D printers, and we can have food synthesizers.
Okay, so this Hitachi lift does go up faster.
But will it drop faster as well ?
I'd like a really slow, large elevator containing a restaurant or a bar. Have dinner or get pissed on the way home! Perfect.
... must come down.
Will this elevator provide foot locks such that people will not 'leave' the floor when it's descending at ~72kmph?
And how are they getting around the queasy sensation you'll most probably feel?
The problem with ascending or descending that fast is that many people will have issues with sinus pressure that can't keep equilibrium. Comfortable ascent/descent in an unpressurized airplane is between 500 fpm and 1000 fpm. 45mph straight up or down is about 4,000 fpm. It hurts my ears just thinking about riding this elevator without it being pressurized!
As long as it doesn't accelerate faster than ~9m/sec, your feet don't leave the ground.
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No time for love in an elevator.
Have gnu, will travel.
I visited Taipei 101 a few months back, which has (IIRC) the fastest elevators in the world right now at about 35 MPH.
My ears popped three times. Each way.
So the answer is simple: they don't avoid the popping.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
This may be a anecdotal comment, so take it for what you will, but I have noticed that Asian buildings and infrastructure technology are so far ahead of us in the USA that it is really embarrassing if you go there and come back and compare.
If you've ever gone to Taipei 101 for example, the elevators move so quickly, and without any vibration as they go up/down that you almost cannot tell if they're moving. Go to Singapore or Hong Kong, and watch how smoothly, quietly, and punctually their subway systems run.
Or go to China and be surprised that in even small-sized cities, you didn't realize that *all* their motorcycles are now electric and they leap-frogged the smelly gasoline phase of motorbike technology.
You come back to the US, and wonder how we're still (maybe) #1, with our rickety buildings and public transport systems. It's embarrassing. And people will say, well, "Who needs quieter, smoother subways? What we have is fine." Said while yelling because you have to cover your ears to not go deaf on the F train in New York City. And as you have to hold your nose as you walk through the piss-soaked, dark and dingy subway/bus station concourses.
Sometimes I feel like we're witnessing the slow decline of American technology / investment when it comes to public infrastructure.
i'm not riding... now for the morning coffee cup holders - that is why the deli is on the top floor.
I'll stick with my Sirius Cybernetics Happy Vertical People Mover, thank you very much. It may be a bit unhinged, but damnit, it gets me where I need to go (well, when it's not sulking in the basement, anyway).
"The Baby Popper"
Wouldn't a falling elevator "box" have its own terminal velocity? Unless the shaft were air-free (e.g. vacuum).
I suppose the descent could be powered... that would work pretty well, at least once.
If you've ever had to walk up five flights of stairs
Even assuming 5 flights of stairs = 5 storeys, I don't find that particularly exhausting. I do it several times a day. And I don't walk up stairs, I trot at about double my walking pace. Not trying to brag -- my general fitness is probably below average. Often I'm not even slower than people who take the elevator because of all the time they spend waiting for it.