Experimental Investigation Of Friction Characteristics And Energy Consumption On Elevator Sliding Guide Shoe System

Friction phenomenon exists in the daily life of everyone, and has been one of the hot topics in the literature. In the mechanical system, existence of friction often becomes the main factors that obstruct system performance. Thus, how to analyze and study friction phenomenon in mechanical system has become one of the most significant issues in mechanical engineering. However, because of the complexity of frictional contact surface, it is difficult to study the friction phenomenon through analytical method, and very often experimental investigation of friction phenomenon becomes the important alternative research method.Considering the influence of friction on mechanical system, this work experimentally studied friction characteristics of sliding guide shoes system. Based on the measured friction data, the system energy consumption was estimated. A friction model was proposed based on the experimental data to describe friction characteristics and energy consumption.This paper firstly reviewed previous work on friction characteristics, friction reduction and elevator related friction, and then based on existing literature,designed and built an experimental platform to simulate the operation of sliding guide shoe system. Experiments were conducted with different types of the guide shoes and different running conditions to analysis the influences of normal load, relative speed, relative acceleration and guide shoes type on the friction phenomenon and energy consumption. The friction characteristics of sliding guide shoes system was obtained by the experiments and a critical friction and friction hysteresis phenomenon were observed.Finally, a friction model was obtained by fitting the experimental data to describe the friction characteristics of sliding guide shoe system. This model takes the influence of normal load, relative speed, relative acceleration and guide shoe types on the friction characteristics into account. Comparing the model prediction and experimental data shows a fair agreement thus validated this model.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 guide shoe system and thus improve service lifetime of structures.