This application is the National Stage entry under 35 U.S.C. § 371 of International Application No. PCT/EP2016/050450 filed on Jan. 12, 2016, published on Jul. 28, 2016 under Publication Number WO 2016/116325, which claims the benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 of Swedish Patent Application Number 1550051-5 filed Jan. 21, 2015.
The present invention concerns motorized doors comprising a shutter for closing or opening an area defined by a frame. In particular, it concerns motorized doors provided with detection cells suitable for detecting an accidental event during the closing of the shutter and thereupon stopping the motion of the shutter. The present invention proposes a solution to the problem of such doors exposed to strong winds or drafts, which can erroneously be interpreted by the detection cells as such an accidental event.
Motorized doors comprising a shutter are commonly used to shut off openings, particularly in warehouses or industrial halls. These shutters are often made up of large flexible tarpaulins the lateral edges of which comprising beads which slide in guiding rails situated on each side of the opening that is to be closed. Alternatively, they can be made of rigid panels hinged to one another side by side or the shutter can be a rigid panel. Automatic doors are particularly useful when they are used to separate two rooms having different environmental conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity and the like, and more particularly to separate an indoor space from outdoor. Doors able to open and close at high speed are also known for these applications and are often referred to as “fast doors”.
One issue with motorized doors, particularly with fast doors due to their high closing speed, is impacts with obstacles accidentally located within the closing trajectory of the shutter. Besides damaging the obstacle (which can be a human) such impact can damage the leading edge of the shutter and also disengage the bead of the shutter lateral edges from the guiding rail. Systems for automatically reinserting a bead thus disengaged are described e.g., in US20100181033, which disclosure is herein incorporated in its entirety by reference.
Since preventing is better than repairing, many motorized doors have been developed comprising (a) detection cells suitable for detecting an accidental event and (b) a control system programmed for implementing a safety function aimed at managing the accidental presence of obstacles, in particular by stopping the door in its travel when it encounters one and moving it away from the obstacle in order to allow the removal thereof.
Various types of detection cells for detecting an accidental event are known in the art. Contactless detection systems, i.e., enabling an obstacle to be detected before impact, are disclosed e.g., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,034,686 with a proximity detector provided with an antenna, which triggers a command to stop and reverses the closure of the vertical door when the magnetic field created by the antenna is disturbed by an foreign object. This system has the advantage of preventing an impact, but it has the drawback of lacking precision given that the magnetic field may radiate outside the closure plane and thus cause false alarms triggered by objects situated close to the door but not underneath it. Optical sensors are also available which are able to detect the presence of a foreign body within the trajectory of the shutter.
An accidental event detection cell can comprise contact detectors as disclosed for example in US2007/0261305. Alternatively, some detection cells are based on the comparison with a reference value of parameters such as the motor torque, motor energy consumption, or shutter closing speed, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 5,198,974. A person skilled in the art therefore has a selection of detection cells to choose from for detecting an accidental event. The safety of a door requires, however, that a safety function be triggered upon detection of an accidental event. In particular, such safety function always includes stopping the closing motion of the shutter and often comprises reversing the direction of the motion to open the shutter, with variations as up to which re-opening position the shutter should be re-opened, whether or not the shutter should be closed again after reaching its re-opening position, the re-opening and/or re-closing speeds of the shutter, and the like.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,034,682, 6,989,767, 5,198,974 and US2007/0261305 concern safety systems for doors in which, as soon as an accidental event is detected, the motor stops, reverses its direction of rotation in order to open the door completely and stops definitively when the door is completely open. The door can be closed once again by manual intervention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,292 concerns a door control system wherein an unwanted opening or closing of a shutter which has been previously locked is identified by a detection cell measuring an increase of the motor energy consumption. As illustrated in
US20120073200 discloses a control system triggering a safety function upon detection of an accidental event comprising, as illustrated in
None of the known detection cells and control systems is able to identify the nature of an accidental event. For example, strong winds may apply a force onto the shutter of the door which increases the friction forces between the edges of the shutter and guiding rails to a point where the detection cells send a signal to the control system, which may be wrongly interpreted as an accidental event requiring the triggering of a safety function. The shutter is then stopped, its motion reversed to re-open the shutter, and reversed again to close it again. If the wind keeps blowing, the same signal can be sent again by the detection cells and, again, be wrongly interpreted by the control system which would trigger the safety function again, thus initiating a sequence referred to in the art as a “yo-yo” effect, which is of course undesirable. Keeping the shutter in its open position is, of course, not an acceptable solution, since the shutter is there to protect the interior of a room from inter alia external winds.
There therefore remains a need in the art for a safety door provided with detection cells and control system, which is potentially exposed to winds and can nonetheless be closed even in case of strong winds blowing. The present invention provides a wind-safe motorized door capable of automatically closing a shutter even when exposed to strong winds and thus avoiding the yo-yo effect. This and other advantages of the present invention are presented in continuation.
The present invention is defined in the appended independent claims. Preferred embodiments are defined in the dependent claims. In particular, the present invention concerns a motorized door for closing an area at least partially defined by a frame, said motorized door comprising:
In order to not start the step (c)(ii) at the first accidental event, it is preferred that in case an mth accidental event is detected between steps (a)&(b), with 0<m≤M, wherein M is preferably equal to 0, 1, 2, or 3, the processor triggers the following steps:
The brief reverse time, Δt, is very short and it is preferably not more than 3 s, more preferably not more than 1 s, most preferably not more than 800 ms.
The detection cell is suitable for detecting an accidental event, but it is the processing unit (CPU) that determines whether an event detected by the detection cell should be considered or not as an accidental event (eI) triggering the operation defined supra. This is carried out by the CPU by comparing the value of a parameter measured or detected by the detection cell with a predetermined reference value or reference range of said parameter. The detection cell is preferably selected among one or more of the following:
The predefined number of accidental events, M+N, defines when the operations stop and the door is opened as the system considers that it cannot be closed in safe conditions. M+N is preferably not more than 20, preferably not more than 15, more preferably not more than 10. The predefined number of wind-like accidental events, N, is not more than 18, preferably not more than 13, more preferably not more than 8.
The shutter is preferably of the type comprising two lateral edges engaged in parallel guiding rails defining two sides of the frame, and wherein the leading edge links the two lateral edges, and moves along the direction defined by the guiding rails upon closing and opening the shutter. The motorized door preferably further comprises means for monitoring the instantaneous position and/or velocity of the leading edge of the shutter in its closing/opening trajectory in the direction defined by the guiding rails. Such means for monitoring the instantaneous position and/or velocity of the leading edge of the shutter may be selected among the following:
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention
The present invention is suitable for various types of doors. For example the shutter and motorized driving mechanism may be selected from:
For a fuller understanding of the nature of the present invention, reference is made to the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
As illustrated in
As shown in
A shutter is a surface defined by a leading edge (1L) moving up (β) and down (α), in case of a vertical area (3) as illustrated in
A motorized door according to the present invention must also comprise a detection cell (5, 6) suitable for detecting an accidental event (eI), wherein I∈, during a moving of the leading edge of the shutter in the first direction (a) to close said area. An accidental event is defined as being a potential threat to a good functioning of the motorized door. As discussed in the introduction, many detection cells (5, 6) are available in the art and the selection of one or the other does not affect the present invention as long as gusts of wind hitting the surface of the shutter may trigger a signal from such detection cells. A door according to the present invention must therefore comprise at least one such detection cell which can mistake wind blowing against the surface of the shutter as an accidental event. In particular, it comprises any detection cell capable of:
The gist of the present invention is the control system, driven by a processing unit (CPU) which, upon reception of a signal from the detection cell that an accidental event may have occurred during the closing of the shutter in the first direction, α, triggers the following wind related function as illustrated in the graph of
After step (c)(ii), in case an (M+i+1)th accidental event (e(M+i+1)) is detected during the movement of the leading edge into the first direction (α), memorize the number of accidental events, I=M+i+1, and repeat step (c) with the new value of I.
For any Ith accidental event with I≤M, the control system considers a priori that said accidental event is not wind related and is caused by an obstacle, an object, or a person obstructing the path of the shutter. A different safety function is then triggered, referred to as non-wind related safety function). The number, M, of non-wind related events is predefined by the operator and can typically be equal to 0, 1, 2, 3, or even more repetitions. It is preferred that M=2, as more than two accidental events occurring during a single closing operation are likely to be wind related.
The non-wind related safety function triggered by the control system for any Ith accidental event with I≤M detected by a detection cell may comprise the following steps as illustrated in
The stop position, zstop, can be the opening position, z=1 as illustrated in
For any Ith accidental event with M<I<M+N, wherein N is the predefined number of wind-related events, the control system considers that said accidental event is related to bursts of wind hitting the surface of the shutter. In order to prevent the yo-yo effect, the wind-related safety function defined by steps (a) to (c) discussed supra and illustrated in
As defined in step (c)(ii), the reversed movement in the second direction, β, following an (M+i)th accidental event is stopped after a brief reverse time, Δt, and the shutter is moved back into the first direction (α) towards the closed position (z=0). The reversed time, Δt, is preferably quite brief, so that the interruption in the closing operation of the shutter can be as brief as possible. For example, the brief reverse time, Δt, can be not more than 3 s, preferably not more than 1 s, more preferably not more than 800 ms.
The efficacy of the wind-safe door is compared in
A safety function according to the prior art with opening of the shutter up to the open position, z=1, followed by closing again the shutter until a next event is identified, is illustrated with dotted lines in
The shutter preferably comprises two lateral edges engaged in parallel guiding rails (7) defining two sides of the frame, and wherein the leading edge links the two lateral edges, and moves along the direction defined by the guiding rails upon closing and opening the shutter. The motorized door preferably further comprises means for monitoring the instantaneous position, z, of the leading edge of the shutter in its closing/opening trajectory in the direction defined by the guiding rails (7).
The means for monitoring the instantaneous position and/or velocity of the leading edge of the shutter can be selected among the following:
A motorized door according to the present invention may comprise the following features:
If I+1≤M, the movement of the shutter in the second direction, β, is stopped at the stop position, zstop, The stop position, zstop, can be equal to the open position, z=1 as illustrated in
If M<I+1<M+N, the processing unit triggers the wind related safety function, comprising stopping the movement in the second direction, β, of the shutter after a brief reverse time, Δt, of the order of 0.8 to about 3.0 s, to give time to the wind generated stress to decrease sufficiently to allow the movement of the shutter to be reversed back into the first direction, α, of closure. If no further accidental event occurs, the shutter is allowed to proceed its trajectory until it reaches its closed position, z=0. If a further accidental event is detected the wind related safety function is resumed with I=I+i until I+i=(M+N)−1.
If I+1=M+N, the processing unit considers that the shutter cannot be closed in good conditions, and the shutter is opened to its open position, z=1 and the safety process is ended.
The flowchart of
The wind related safety function applied at a first accidental event or, preferably, at (M+1) accidental events and following, with the first M accidental events being handled as non-wind related events as known in the art is very advantageous to avoid the yo-yo effect observed with doors exposed to strong winds or to wind bursts. The yo-yo effect is highly undesirable, as it consumes much motor energy while leaving the indoor volume exposed to the outdoor environmental conditions. The limiting number of accidental events (M+N) after which the shutter is moved back to its open position, z=1 and the safety function is ended corresponds to a situation wherein it is considered that the shutter cannot be closed in safe conditions, and it is safer to let it open.
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WO2016/116325 | 7/28/2016 | WO | A |
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