A Two-Dimensional Aerodynamic Model for Super-High-Speed Elevator Design

During Elevcon ’96 held in Barcelona, a paper on 1-dimensional aerodynamic model for super-high-speed elevator design was presented. That paper addressed the ‘weak shock’ produced when the car was accelerating and that was the source of excessive vibration. In this paper, the unsteady 2-dimensional turbulence flow in the hoistway with an upward accelerating car is simulated by solving the time-dependent Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations with a corresponding turbulence model. Since the flow is very complicated due to unsteadiness, the compressibility and string turbulence, the numerical scheme must be highly efficient. Therefore, a new ‘multi-grid’ method is adopted. The results of simulating three kinds of car shape, namely flat top, conical top and spherical top, show that this method has been very effective in solving such a complicated problem.