Modeling And Experimental Investigation Of Friction Reduction On Elevator Sliding Shoe System

With the rapid development of social economy, the annual production and ownership of elevator has risen sharply. Elevator is not only one of special equipments, but also a typical transport construction, whose energy performance is an important index for the whole building energy consumption. In addition, with series of relevant national energy policy, as well as new requirements of energy saving and emission reduction, the development of energy conservation has gradually become a vital indicator to study in the elevator industry.For a large number of elevators rated at medium or low speed, due to technical and economical reasons, sliding guide shoes are usually utilized as the guiding device for the elevator car and counterweight movement. Because of the direct planar surface contact between the railway and sliding guide shoes, there is great friction loss during the elevator movement, while the presence of large friction limits the maximum operating speed of the elevator. Therefore, it is very meaningful for engineering to study the friction behavior in order to reduce the friction, achieve energy conservation and improve the operating speed of the elevator. This paper aims to find an effective way to increase the efficiency and expand the life of elevator by research on the friction reduction of elevator sliding guide shoe system, which also provides some useful references for other mechanical friction occasions.The 2-DOF elastic-plastic contact model of rough surface under the dry friction is first established to analyze the effect of contact angular displacement on surface friction properties. For the dynamic condition, the coupling of vertical displacement and angular displacement is taken into account to study the effect of friction coefficient and slip velocity on the system stability.Furthermore, based on computational fluid dynamics, the finite element model for new-fashioned sliding guide shoes with groove texture optimization is applied. Both cases of cavitation boundary condition and negative pressure allowed condition are considered to analyze the hydrodynamic effect and friction performance under the full lubrication by the numerical simulation and comparison. Finally, the pin-on-disk sliding friction tester is designed and built up to simulate the actual contact conditions for elevator sliding guide shoe system. Samples with different materials and groove texture dimension parameters are examined to study the effect of sliding velocity, applied load, lubrication styles, texture size and material properties on the friction performance.The research method and conclusions of this work may provide a scientific path through which one can obtain a better understanding on conducting the friction in sliding guiding system and then improve operational precision and service lifetime of structures.