CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/919214
An excerpt from the CW Talks interview with Steve Gonzalez about elevator manufacturer KONE's CFRP elevator rope, and selections from CW coverage of the fast growing, broadly expanding trend toward full automation of composite part production. JANUARY 2018 14 CompositesWorld TRENDS Q&A;: Steve Gonzalez, director of major projects unit, Americas, KONE CW: The Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, when it's complete, will be 1 km tall. What are the challenges posed as the world's buildings get taller? SG: We are working with architects and general contractors and building owners to really understand how they plan for the building to be used, initially, and then what types of changes might be seen from a usage perspective in the future so that we can design a building that functions now, and also functions after the building's usage changes. It may be a mixed-use building now, but it may turn into a full residential building later. Or it may turn into an office building later. CW: How is elevator technology evolving as buildings get bigger? SG: Elevator technology has not changed very much over the last several years, and includes use of steel ropes, motors and counterweights to move the car up and down in a building. But the ropes themselves, when you get to ultra-tall buildings, become so heavy that in order to suspend the ropes, you need more ropes. Therefore, in order to allow for longer trips, which ends up being important when these buildings get really tall, you need to do something to address the weight associated with the ropes themselves. Editor's note: As skyscrapers get taller, the task of physically moving people via elevators over long distances has become more difficult, particularly given the sheer mass of steel cabling required. Elevator manufacturer KONE, about 10 years ago, started looking at ways to replace steel cables with carbon fiber composites, and a couple of years ago introduced UltraRope, a pultruded, flat, flexible, lightweight alternative (see photo) that is making next-generation elevator tech- nology possible. Gonzalez was CW's guest recently on CW Talks: The Composites Podcast. Excerpts of that conversation follow. To listen to the entire conversation, search for CW Talks on iTunes or Google Play, or visit www.compositesworld.com/podcast. CW: Walk us through what UltraRope is and how it was developed. SG: The rope ends up being an important place to take weight from, especially when the buildings get really tall …. In a really tall building you could have 20 or more miles of this rope …. That means that if you can cut that weight down, not only do you save energy because you're not moving all that mass — and the rope itself if the vast majority of the moving mass in the elevator system — but you can buy yourself the opportunity to put weight elsewhere, which means you can have different materials in the car and change the way the cars are insulated …. We've got a very robust R&D; group and we've got folks who are infinitely curious, and it just so happens that some of these guys are really interested in these alter- native materials …. The challenge really is the flexibility. Carbon fiber when we think about it is this lightweight but rigid material, but of course when we're talking about doing is taking this carbon fiber rope and wrapping it around a pulley …. We spent lots of time making sure the carbon fiber would last a long time, be flexible enough to wrap around the [pulleys] and then figured out how to coat the carbon fiber so that we had the necessary fric- tion to make the system work. Source | KONE