Capacity of a Chairlift

I this blog I am going to be looking into chair lifts which are a vital part of the winter sports resorts as a method of transport up the mountain. The main aim i want to achieve is find out the actual capacity of a chairlift.

By studying an example in France, the Templin which is a 4 seater, I am going to work out the force on the cables between the line towers.

Specification of the Templin

• Year Installed - 2003
• Slope Length -1015m
• Vertical Rise -246m
• Speed -2.3m/s
• Distance Between Chairs - 18.4m
• Mass of Empty Chairs - 160Kg
• Number of Chairs - 111
• Primary Drive - 200KW
• Number of Line Towers - 10
• Cable Thickness - 40.5mm
• Distance Between Cables - 4.9m
• Tension at Stations - 380000N

The Hill which the Chairlift operates upon:




Things to take into account when working out the forces:

Mass of each chairlift
Mass of the cables
Mass of the passengers (only affecting chairs going up the mountain)
The forces acting on the line towers (including the turning force in the horizontal plane)

Calculations

After some calculations I have worked out that the force acting on each Tower in aproximately 10175N and 90 degrees to the slope. Although this calculations did not take into acount the affect of weather conditions such as the high winds and snow fall on the system.

Further Work

Although this result is a resonable reprisentation of the lifting system it does not take into account the high turning forces acting between the chair and cable from wind and the rocking from passengers.

Matthew Dean