Black Box Solves The Elevator Salvation Problem

YangCheng Evening News 2006.10.13.
---Xu Yue and Cheng Xuan report from GZ

    "Black box" was the name of a special surveillance device on an airplane before. But now there is a new member of black box, that is the elevator running data recorder. It records all the time the elevator’s working state data and informs elevator managers automatically in case of elevator operation failure. So you will not worry once you are trapped in the elevator. It also records small elevator running malfunctions and will send maintenance warnings before the elevator refuses to work. So it can prevent accidents to happen. This black box has been installed for testing in elevators made by 5 different manufacturers since last year. The accidents caused by malfunctions never happened on the elevators in Tiyuxi Road Tianwen Garden.

    Auto Warning

    We saw the Black Box in Guangzhou special device supervise and inspection institute. The institute spent 1,350,000 Yuan to research and invent this black box. The black box is of a 16K paper in size and is usually installed in elevator control box. The passengers can’t see it. But once the passengers are trapped inside the elevator, they will know how important this black box is, because it will automatically send operation failure warning messages to 3 managers’ mobile phones via the GSM/GPRS communication module and mobile communication network, so that the emergency can be solved immediately.
    Normally once the passengers are trapped inside the elevator, they have to use the emergency phone inside or press alarm to call the duty people in the engine room for help. Then the duty people will inform the maintenance technicians, and the technicians have to monitor the emergency call all the time. Thus the repair can’t be done in time, the duty people have to go here and there. If the accident happens at midnight, there will be no duty in the engine room and the elevator is usually not covered by the mobile communication network, it will be terrible for the passengers trapped inside the elevators, they have no way to report the emergent situation.
    The black box also can detect 9 malfunctions in real time including power cut, elevator rushing to the top, bumping to the bottom, overspeed etc. it can send corresponding warning short message. That saves the time to repair.

    Maintenance Notification

    The black box makes revolutionary contribution. That is its accident prevention and self-inspection functions. Before its invention, inspectors only can check elevator’s temporal state on their routine inspections. They have no way to get the information of what kind of problem and which type of malfunction the elevator has a certain period of time before. Some intermittent, accumulative, hidden malfunctions are very easy to be omitted, and finally leads to serious malfunctions even accident. Last year there are all together 211 cases of elevator running accident in China, which caused 196 dead.
    Once the black box is installed on the elevator. It will surveille and record automatically the elevator’s running state. It can store 2 years of running record files. The black box will catch every slight or short fault, so the maintenance technicians get a correct judgement after making analysis to the running data in a certain period of time. So they can inspect purposely and eliminate malfunctions and hidden risks.