In elevator technology, several methods are used to pro- duce the motive power for elevators. A common method is to use a traction sheave connected to a rotating motor hoisting the elevator car by means of ropes, with a coun- terweight placed on the opposite side of the traction sheave to balance the load. Another established solution is found in hydraulic elevators, in which the hoisting power to move the car is obtained from hydraulic cylin- ders either directly or via ropes. Most modern elevators are based on these solutions, of which many variations have been developed.

Although the above-mentioned elevator types have become established and are safe and reliable in operation, the solutions used in them comprise several factors that are objects of improvement and product development. For exam- ple, investigations are continuously being made to find ways of more effective utilisation of building space and reduction of energy consumption. For hydraulic elevators, the hoisting height is in practice limited to a few floors. By contrast, elevators with rope suspension have been installed in buildings as high as several hundred metres, in which case rope elongation and oscillation cause problems. Because of the rope suspension arrange- ments, the number of elevators in a shaft is practically limited to one.

In addition to rope-suspended and hydraulic elevators, several solutions for the use of a linear motor in an elevator have been proposed. In this case the electric motor is completely located in the shaft space. Most lin- ear elevator motors have been based on the induction mo-

tor principle, although other motor types, such as a lin- ear motor based on permanent magnets have also been pre- sented. Several different solutions have been proposed, but as yet it has not been possible to produce a competi- tive elevator.

The object of the present invention is to achieve a new elevator in which several drawbacks encountered in prior- art solutions are avoided. To achieve this, the elevator of the invention is characterised by the features pre- sented in the characterisation part of claim 1.

The invention is based a so-called switched reluctance linear motor or a variant developed from it, which makes use of the so-called microflux technique. In the switched reluctance motor, the windings of the linear motor are optionally placed either in a fixed primary circuit or in a movable secondary circuit. The motor is used to both move the car and support it by generating a force compo- nent in the direction of motion and a force component perpendicular to the direction of motion. The placement of the winding on the primary or secondary side can be selected separately for each application.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention it is utilised the combined effect of a linear motor and pneumatic air gap regulation. The linear motor is used to both move the car and support it by generating a force component in the direction of motion and a force compo- nent perpendicular to the direction of motion. The air gap between the primary and secondary circuits of the linear motor is maintained by means of the perpendicular component and pressurised air.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, in a motor based on the microflux technique, called micro- flux motor, the windings are placed on both the primary

and secondary sides, thus reducing the proportion of leakage flux and improving the power-to-weight ratio of the motor. The supply of current to the windings is so controlled that the magnetic flux will only pass through a minimal distance in the yoke part of the motor and that the flux loop will be completed in the first place via adjacent teeth.

According to a preferred embodiment, the power is sup- plied to the windings using control equipment disposed along the entire length of the track of the elevator and each winding is controlled separately. Alternatively, several windings can be combined to form a group with common control.

According to another alternative implementation of the invention, the pneumatic equipment comprises a source of pressurised air and a pipe system with nozzles, fitted substantially in the air gap between the primary and sec- ondary circuits of the linear motor. The pressurised air keeps the air gap clean and generates a smooth air flow from the centre of the air gap towards its edges.

The alternatives regarding the structural solutions of the invention are to dispose the linear motor and pneu- matic equipment on one side of the elevator car or to dispose the linear motor and pneumatic equipment on two or more sides of the elevator car. The former solution provides more freedom regarding the placement of the ele- vator in the building and an independence of a tradi- tional elevator shaft. The latter solution allows more freedom of variation of the physical dimensions of the elevator-specific motor.

In an embodiment of the invention relating especially to the structure of the linear motor, the tooth pitch of the primary and secondary circuits is effected by applying

the vernier principle. The motor power can thus be uni- formly distributed over the entire length of the active part of the motor, i. e. the movable secondary side.

According to a further embodiment, the primary circuit and/or secondary circuit is coated with a plastic film on the surface facing the air gap. The effective air gap of the linear motor can thus be adjusted without increasing the pneumatically regulated air gap at the same time.

The new type of motor solution of the invention provides several advantages in elevator technology. As the motor applies a lifting force directly to the elevator car, it eliminates the need for hoisting ropes, which are an ob- ject of regular maintenance and renewal. Readjustments due to rope elongation naturally become unnecessary. Cor- respondingly, no traction sheave and no diverting pulleys need to be installed. The counterweight and associated shaft equipment, such as counterweight guide rails, be- come superfluous. No separate machine room is needed, but the control and operating equipment can be placed in the elevator or in conjunction with the equipment at the landings. The travel of the elevator car in the elevator shaft is controlled by a pneumatic bearing system, so there are no conventional car guides and guide rails in- stalled for them. Safety gears as used in current tech- nology are also left out. The overall degree of utilisa- tion of the elevator shaft is higher because the only equipment that needs to be installed in the elevator shaft in addition to the elevator car is the very flat magnetic circuits of the motor. The lifting height is un- limited without any special additional equipment or rig- ging necessitated by height.

The elevator can be implemented as a external installa- tion in which the elevator climbs along the external wall of the building, thus allowing a further space saving in-

side the building. In the elevator solution of the inven- tion it is further possible to use a light car construc- tion because the magnitude of the friction does not limit the minimum car weight as in the case of traction sheave elevators. Based on the degrees of freedom of the eleva- tor of the invention and the limitations of conventional elevators, this new solution provides advantages espe- cially in the case of very high and very short elevator shafts. Furthermore, the elevator solution of the present invention makes it possible to develop multiple-car ele- vator shafts and also transport systems combining verti- cal and horizontal movement.

The switched reluctance motor has a considerably higher power-to-weight ratio than conventional motor solutions.

In the microflux motor, the power-to-weight ratio can be further improved as compared even with the reluctance mo- tor.

In the following, the invention will be described in de- tail by the aid of some of its embodiments by referring to the attached drawings, in which -Fig. 1 illustrates the principle of the elevator of the invention, -Fig. 2a and 2b illustrate the principle of a switched reluctance motor, showing the motor as seen in side view and from the side of the air gap, -Fig. 3a and 3b illustrate the principle of a microflux motor, showing the motor in lateral view and from the side of the air gap, -Fig. 4 illustrates the force effects of the motor, -Fig. 5 illustrates the principle of control of the mo- tor of the invention.

The elevator of the invention (Fig. 1) moves along the surface of the primary circuit, i. e. stator 2 of a linear

motor attached to a wall 1 of an elevator shaft fitted in a building. Although in Fig. 1 the elevator is depicted as moving in a shaft delimited by walls 1,3 and 5, the implementation of the invention is not limited to a shaft, but instead the elevator, supported by its motor, can move along its stator, which is attached to the wall 1 or otherwise reliably fixed to the building, without side walls. A movable slide 4 with the secondary circuit, i. e. rotor of the linear motor fitted to it is attached to the elevator car 6 and it moves alongside the stator 2, separated from it by an air gap, as described in more detail later on.

As illustrated by Fig. 2a and 2b, the stator 2 comprises a plurality of component stators 8 attached to a support- ing structure 7 of the stator and comprising a magnetic circuit 10 with teeth 12 pointing toward the rotor and a yoke part 14 connecting the teeth. The iron structure is substantially of the same order of thickness in the area of both the teeth and the yoke. Wound around the stator teeth 12 are coils 16, and the current flowing in the coils generates a magnetic flux 18 passing via the teeth and the yoke part and further across the air gap 20 into the magnetic circuit 22 of the rotor fitted to the slide.

The magnetic circuit 22 of the rotor consists of rotor teeth 24 and a yoke part 26 connecting adjacent rotor teeth 24. In the embodiment presented in Fig. 2a, the slot pitch of the component stators is identical with the slot pitch of the rotor, so the teeth of a given compo- nent stator are aligned with the rotor teeth opposite the component stator. Adjacent component stators have been removed through distance x in the direction of motion of the slide, which in the example in Fig. 2a corresponds to 1/8 of the rotor slot pitch. Between the rotor and the stator, a force is developed which has a force component Fx acting in the direction of the yoke of the slide, i. e. in the direction of motion, and a force component Fy act-

ing in a direction perpendicular to the direction of mo- tion and attracting the rotor and stator to each other when a current is passed through the coil under appropri- ate control as described in detail below. The slide is provided with air channels 27. At one end, the air chan- nels terminate in a nozzle 21 in the air gap 20 of the motor and at the other end they are connected to a pipe system 23 with a pneumatic pressure source 25 connected to it. The entire pneumatic equipment can be mounted on the elevator car, in which case its drive motor is pow- ered via a car cable or supply rails. Alternatively, the pneumatic pressure source can be immovably mounted in the building, in which case a pipe system 23 is provided un- der/beside the track of the elevator in a manner corre- sponding to a car cable. Using the pneumatic equipment, pressurised air is supplied into the air gap 20 of the motor so that the attractive force between the stator and rotor is cancelled and a constant air gap is maintained.

The stator and rotor surfaces facing the air gap are of a smooth shape to ensure that the pressurised air is dis- tributed in the air gap uniformly enough to maintain a constant air gap magnitude. The spaces between the stator windings and slots are filled with resin or some other material known in the art. Correspondingly, the slots be- tween the rotor teeth are filled with resin or some other non-magnetic filler. Thus, the magnetic circuit consists of the stator and rotor teeth and the yoke parts connect- ing the teeth as well as the air gap between the stator and rotor.

An essential factor about the switched reluctance motor is that the magnetic flux must be so controlled that it will pass through two adjacent teeth and the yoke part connecting them on both the stator side and the rotor side. This ensures that the path of the magnetic flux is short and no massive iron frame is needed. In a rotor as shown in Fig. 2, placing the stator windings close to the

air gap substantially reduces the stray flux, but some stray flux still appears on the side of the rotor teeth.

To reduce the stray flux, in the alternative presented in Fig. 3, coils 28 have been wound around the rotor teeth 24 as well. Where applicable, the same reference numbers are used in Fig. 3 as in Fig. 2 for corresponding parts.

In the microflux motor according to the embodiment illus- trated by Fig. 3, microflux motor'being the designation used for this alternative in this context, the displace- ment x of the component stators of the stator is 1/21 of the rotor slot pitch. Thus, there are twenty stator teeth for a length of 21 teeth of the entire rotor. In this manner, applying the vernier principle, a smoothness of the lifting force is achieved, which will be discussed in a later paragraph in conjunction with Fig. 4. The mag- netic circuit of the stator in the microflux motor pre- sented in Fig. 3 comprises a continuous yoke provided with teeth in accordance with the slot pitch. Thus, the embodiments illustrated by Fig. 2 and 3 differ structur- ally from each other and their control principles differ correspondingly from each other in certain details. In each embodiment, however, power is supplied to the stator windings in such a way that the main flux generated by each winding completes its loop via the tooth adjacent to the winding and does not pass further through the yoke.

In the case illustrated by Fig. 3, the power supplied to the rotor windings serves to reduce the stray flux.

For the sake of clarity, Fig. 3 only depicts a part of the stator windings 16 and rotor windings 28. The direc- tion of the current (+ or-) is shown in each slot and the magnetic fluxes completing their loops via the teeth 12 and 24, yoke parts 14 and 26 and air gap 20 are de- picted with solid and broken lines, respectively.

The force generated by the stator winding in the direc- tion of motion varies in the manner illustrated by curve

FXa as a rotor tooth is moving past a stator tooth Ta.

When it passes the next tooth Tb, a force effect as il- lustrated by curve FXb is produced. The windings are switched on phased with a corresponding timing differ- ence. As the stator and rotor teeth are additionally re- moved according to the vernier principle, a uniform total force Fx in the direction of motion is achieved. The bro- ken line Fya describes the mutual attractive force per- pendicular to the direction of motion between the stator tooth and the rotor tooth. In the case of a certain di- mensioning applied, force components of the indicated magnitude were formed on the ordinate axis, Fy being over four times as high as Fx.

The basic circuit arrangement of the microflux motor and its control in an elevator drive is presented in Fig. 5.

Mounted in the elevator shaft over its entire length is the stator, which comprises stator windings, i. e. shaft coils L1, L2,... LN, LN+1, LN+2,..., LM, fitted in the slots between the stator teeth as explained above, shifted in phase in relation to the rotor teeth. Coils L1,..., LN are connected in series and power is supplied to them from a single constant current power source 30. Along the total length of the elevator shaft there are several series- connected sets of shaft coils mounted one after the other, each set being fed by its own constant current power source. To enable each shaft coil to be switched on at the appropriate time, the elevator shaft is provided with detectors 32 which detect the position of the slide in the shaft and are used to switch on power to the ap- propriate portion of the shaft windings. It is not neces- sary to impose any exact requirements regarding the con- trol of the shaft coils because it is enough to have the stator windings energised when the slide is over them.

The constant current power sources for the shaft coils are fed from the electricity supply network by a mains bridge 34 via cables 36 mounted in the shaft. The current

of the constant current power source 30 is also con- trolled by current adjusting equipment 38 via cables 40 mounted in the shaft. The control of the constant current power sources and therefore of the coils can be imple- mented in a manner known in itself and need not be de- scribed here in greater detail, but a person skilled in the art can design and construct the details of the equipment required by the invention in accordance with the principles taught by the invention.

Mounted on the elevator car is a slide 4 consisting of a toothed magnetic pack as illustrated by Fig. 3, which comprises e. g. ten rotor windings 28. Each rotor winding is controlled by its own coil controller 42, which are fed from the mains bridge 34 via car cables 44. The coil controller is controlled using the speed reference and actual speed value of the elevator. The speed reference 46 is generated in accordance with the elevator control logic 48 and the actual speed value 50 is generated by means of speed or position detectors from the motion of the elevator car or the slide. The control signals of the coil controller are taken to the car via a control cable 52. The coil controllers are so controlled that the force acting on the car is in accordance with the direction of motion and the car load.

The rotor windings can also be controlled using position and speed detectors. In this case, the elevator car is provided with a position detector for generating a posi- tion signal corresponding to the position of the elevator car and with an accelerometer for an acceleration con- troller. The coil controllers are controlled by the data provided by the position detector and the acceleration controller, so the position detector must provide suffi- ciently accurate position data to allow timely switching of the windings.

When the elevator is moving in the up direction, the mo- tor windings must be so magnetised that, in addition to the perpendicular force between the stator and rotor that supports the car in the shaft, a force depending on the weight and velocity of motion of the car is generated.

When the car is moving in the down direction, it can be braked electrically by supplying power into resistors or into the electricity supply network or into an energy re- serve, such as a storage battery. However, the windings must produce a force between the stator and rotor that keeps the car fast on the shaft wall.

The control of a switched reluctance motor can be imple- mented in a corresponding manner, but the technical im- plementation differs considerably from that described above because only one of the motor halves is provided with windings and only these are controlled.

The supply of electricity to the shaft can be implemented in a partitioned fashion so that the coil controllers within each partition comprising a distance of a few me- tres have a separate power source connected to the elec- tricity supply network.

The force Fy acting on the car and slide in a direction perpendicular to the direction of motion is compensated and a constant air gap between the stator and rotor is maintained by supplying pressurised air into the air gap via a pipe system 27. This technique is known from pneu- matic bearing technology and according to it the pressure difference causes air to flow from the nozzle in the pipe to the edges of the motor.

The energy required for the lifting movement of the ele- vator is larger than in elevator solutions using a coun- terweight. To reduce the power taken from the electricity supply network, energy reserves are used into which the

energy developed by the elevator car moving downward is loaded.

The energy needed by the rotor moving together with the elevator car can also be supplied to the car using means other than a car cable. It is possible to provide the shaft with conductor rails from which electricity is passed to car supply cables via current collectors. Al- ternatively, the energy can also be supplied inductively, via radiation or from an accumulator mounted on the ele- vator car and charged during stoppages.

The invention has been described above by the aid of one of its embodiments. However, the presentation is not to be regarded as constituting a limitation of the sphere of protection of the patent, but its embodiments may vary within the limits defined by the following claims. In ad- dition to the embodiments presented as examples, there are numerous alternative solutions regarding electricity supply, elevator control, motor construction, regenera- tion of braking energy and safety device arrangements.

Although the motor has been described as comprising only one air gap, it is possible to use a motor with several air gaps and a corresponding number of stator and rotor pairs defining the air gaps and placed on one side of the elevator car, on opposite sides of the elevator car or on two or more sides perpendicular to each other. Likewise, a plurality of motors can be disposed at different angles to each other even though they are on the same side or on different sides of the elevator car.