Elevator Safety System Reconfiguration After Malfunction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional elevator safety systems are error-sensitive, leading to immediate shutdown if a single failure occurs in the safety chain, resulting in users being trapped inside the elevator car until a serviceman arrives.
Innovation Solution
An elevator safety system that monitors a set of safety devices and reconfigures itself to exclude the malfunctioned or failed portion, allowing the elevator to continue operating and safely stop at a landing floor to release users, without adding extra components to the safety chain.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional elevator safety systems use series-connected safety contacts, then safety monitoring is achieved, but the system stops immediately upon any single failure, causing user entrapment
Solution Approach 1:
The safety control system dynamically reconfigures its internal architecture based on operational status. When a safety contact fails, the system transitions from a strict series configuration to a reconfigured state where remaining functional contacts can still control the safety brakes, allowing the elevator to complete its current cycle and release users rather than trapping them indefinitely.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes its operational parameters and control logic based on the detected failure state. Upon identifying a failed safety contact, the control system modifies its response parameters, allowing continued operation with reduced safety monitoring capability rather than immediate shutdown, thereby preventing user entrapment while maintaining adequate safety through alternative monitoring paths.
2Reliability
If additional override processors are added to monitor microcontroller health, then system reliability improves, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The safety control system performs self-diagnosis and self-reconfiguration using its existing microcontroller and safety contacts. The microcontroller monitors the health status of its own components and automatically reconfigures the safety chain when failures are detected, eliminating the need for separate override processors while maintaining high reliability through autonomous fault management.
Data Source
AI summary
An elevator safety system includes a safety controller in connection with an elevator safety chain for monitoring safety of an elevator system. The elevator safety system is arranged, in a first configuration of the elevator safety system, to monitor a set of safety devices, and arranged to be reconfigured from the first configuration to a second configuration of the elevator safety system in response to a detection of a malfunction or failure in a portion of the first configuration, wherein, in the second configuration, the malfunctioned or failed portion is at least functionally excluded. An elevator system and a method for continuing operation of an elevator system after a malfunction or failure are also disclosed.