At Kone’s test facility in Lohja, Finland, built 1,000 feet down a limestone mine, the company is tackling a problem that’s more familiar to frequent flyers than elevator riders. Engineers are determining the optimal speed for fans that control air pressure inside cars, which can descend in a mega-high-rise building faster than a commercial airplane coming in for a landing, De Jong says. Jets may have 30 minutes to reduce cabin pressure as they approach the airport; elevators in the tallest buildings may have just 30 seconds to depressurize.
For Dubai’s 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa tower, the world’s tallest building at the moment, Otis designed a system using double-deck cars, computerized dispatch, and its compact Gen2 lifts, which replace steel cables with polyurethane-coated belts. It uses smaller, gearless drives instead of bulky motors, eliminating the need for a large engine room.
Female engineers make mark in Detroit
“Female engineers — despite their stubbornly small numbers in all industries — increasingly have a big impact on the vehicles and safety features that Detroit is offering”
“(Chris) Barman (who headed team that designed the new Dodge Dart) likes to tell freshmen women at Purdue University, her alma mater, about her work studying Mercedes-Benz's electronic stability control when Chrysler was owned by Daimler.
She tells them about the thousands of lives that are expected to be saved when the now-mandated stability control is on all vehicles.
"Women want to feel like they are making an impact on the world around them," Barman says. "So I tell them I was part of bringing this technology into Chrysler products that resulted in that reduction in injuries and lost lives."”
USA Today
BTW The Dodge Dart had a series of self-deprecating “how we designed the car” commercials like below
February 26, 2013 in Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)