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Hydraulic Elevators

Hydraulic elevators use a hydraulic system to lift the elevator car by pushing a piston up inside a cylinder. The system includes a fluid reservoir, pump powered by an electric motor, and a valve. When the valve is open, pressurized fluid from the pump flows into the cylinder to lift the car. When the car reaches the desired floor, the pump is shut off and the valve closed to stop the car. To lower the car, the valve opens and fluid flows back into the reservoir, lowering the piston and car. While simple and effective, hydraulic elevators have some drawbacks discussed later.

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Ashish Deotale
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69 views4 pages

Hydraulic Elevators

Hydraulic elevators use a hydraulic system to lift the elevator car by pushing a piston up inside a cylinder. The system includes a fluid reservoir, pump powered by an electric motor, and a valve. When the valve is open, pressurized fluid from the pump flows into the cylinder to lift the car. When the car reaches the desired floor, the pump is shut off and the valve closed to stop the car. To lower the car, the valve opens and fluid flows back into the reservoir, lowering the piston and car. While simple and effective, hydraulic elevators have some drawbacks discussed later.

Uploaded by

Ashish Deotale
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Hydraulic Elevators

The concept of an elevator is incredibly simple -- it's just a compartment attached to a


lifting system. Tie a piece of rope to a box, and you've got a basic elevator.
Of course, modern passenger and freight elevators are a lot more elaborate than this.
They need advanced mechanical systems to handle the substantial weight of the
elevator car and its cargo. Additionally, they need control mechanisms so passengers
can operate the elevator, and they need safety devices to keep everything running
smoothly.
There are two major elevator designs in common use today: hydraulic
elevators and roped elevators.
Hydraulic elevator systems lift a car using a hydraulic ram, a fluid-driven piston
mounted inside a cylinder. You can see how this system works in the diagram below.
The cylinder is connected to a fluid-pumping system (typically, hydraulic systems
like this use oil, but other incompressible fluids would also work). The hydraulic
system has three parts:

A tank (the fluid reservoir)

A pump, powered by an electric motor

A valve between the cylinder and the reservoir


The pump forces fluid from the tank into a pipe leading to the cylinder. When the
valve is opened, the pressurized fluid will take the path of least resistance and return to
the fluid reservoir. But when the valve is closed, the pressurized fluid has nowhere to

go except into the cylinder. As the fluid collects in the cylinder, it pushes the piston up,
lifting the elevator car.
When the car approaches the correct floor, the control system sends a signal to the
electric motor to gradually shut off the pump. With the pump off, there is no more
fluid flowing into the cylinder, but the fluid that is already in the cylinder cannot
escape (it can't flow backward through the pump, and the valve is still closed). The
piston rests on the fluid, and the car stays where it is.
To lower the car, the elevator control system sends a signal to the valve. The valve is
operated electrically by a basic solenoid switch (check out How Electromagnets
Work for information on solenoids). When the solenoid opens the valve, the fluid that
has collected in the cylinder can flow out into the fluid reservoir. The weight of the car
and the cargo pushes down on the piston, which drives the fluid into the reservoir. The
car gradually descends. To stop the car at a lower floor, the control system closes the
valve again.
This system is incredibly
simple and highly effective,
but it does have some
drawbacks. In the next
section, we'll look at the main
disadvantages of using
hydraulics.

How a Jet Engine Works

This is a picture of how the air flows through a jet engine.


Jet engines move the airplane forward with a great force that is produced by a
tremendous thrust and causes the plane to fly very fast.
All jet engines, which are also called gas turbines, work on the same principle. The
engine sucks air in at the front with a fan. A compressor raises the pressure of the air.
The compressor is made up of fans with many blades and attached to a shaft. The
blades compress the air. The compressed air is then sprayed with fuel and an electric
spark lights the mixture. The burning gases expand and blast out through the nozzle, at
the back of the engine. As the jets of gas shoot backward, the engine and the aircraft
are thrust forward.

The image above shows how the air flows through the engine. The air goes through
the core of the engine as well as around the core. This causes some of the air to be
very hot and some to be cooler. The cooler air then mixes with the hot air at the engine
exit area.

A jet engine operates on the application of Sir Isaac Newton's third law of physics: for
every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is called thrust. This law is
demonstrated in simple terms by releasing an inflated balloon and watching the
escaping air propel the balloon in the opposite direction. In the basic turbojet engine,
air enters the front intake and is compressed, then forced into combustion chambers
where fuel is sprayed into it and the mixture is ignited. Gases which form expand
rapidly and are exhausted through the rear of the combustion chambers. These gases
exert equal force in all directions, providing forward thrust as they escape to the rear.
As the gases leave the engine, they pass through a fan-like set of blades (turbine)
which rotates the turbine shaft. This shaft, in turn, rotates the compressor, thereby
bringing in a fresh supply of air through the intake. Engine thrust may be increased by
the addition of an afterburner section in which extra fuel is sprayed into the exhausting
gases which burn to give the added thrust. At approximately 400 mph, one pound of
thrust equals one horsepower, but at higher speeds this ratio increases and a pound of
thrust is greater than one horsepower. At speeds of less than 400 mph, this ratio
decreases.
In a turboprop engine, the exhaust gases are also used to rotate a propeller attached to
the turbine shaft for increased fuel economy at lower altitudes. A turbofan
engineincorporates a fan to produce additional thrust, supplementing that created by
the basic turbojet engine, for greater efficiency at high altitudes. The advantages of jet
engines over piston engines include lighter weight with greater power, simpler
construction and maintenance with fewer moving parts, and efficient operation with
cheaper fuel.

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