A Proposal of a Ropeless Lift System and Evaluation of its Feasibility

Ropeless lifts are needed for vertical transport in the future super skyscrapers whose height is more than 800m because of the limited handling capacity of roped lifts for such buildings. The ropeless lifts have two advantages: multiple car operation in a single shaft and transferability between shafts. The ropeless lifts can be operated like double-track railway systems by making use of these advantages. In this paper, we propose designing and operating methods for the ropeless lifts in order to obtain higher handling capacity and save more lift space than conventional roped lifts. The methods contain mainly two ideas: three shaft operation integrated as a unit and application of zonal direct train scheduling. We analyse the lift area of the ropeless lifts and compare it with that of roped lifts. We conclude that the ropeless lifts can save lift area and are enough applicable to present buildings whose number of floors is about 70.