Azerbaijan is located in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west and Iran to the south. The capital, Baku, has recently started to operate new escalators within its metro.
Thyssenkrupp Elevator announced two years ago that it had won the public tenders of Baku Metro to supply 25 escalators. The first four escalators with 40m rise were installed at Sahil station in 2017. This was a replacement project, while currently the metro in Baku is also installing 17 of Thyssenkrupp’s Tugela escalators (www.is.gd/pobata) with rises of between 6m and 13m for a new station with the name ‘B3’.
In total, Thyssenkrupp has more than 80 units installed and in operation for the Baku Metro. And, in September, the company revealed that the longest escalators it has ever produced and ‘that were ever built in Germany’ – standing at 100m in length and bridging a height of 48.7m – have now begun operating in the Khatai district of Baku. “It’s a replacement project in an existing tunnel that was drilled during the Soviet Union in the 1950s,” explains a Thyssenkrupp Elevator spokesperson.
ESCALATOR SPECS
According to Thyssenkrupp, the four Baku models will help to revolutionise the ability of the metro stations to cope with increasing passenger numbers and bring the city in line with modern-day transport demands.
The four steel giants are narrower than any other solutions, without reducing comfort and space, it adds (see box, p12). This is achieved through the design and by installing the drive (motors and gears) on the floor in front of the escalator, rather than inside the escalator. This has enabled Thyssenkrupp Elevator to install four units instead of three. As a result, more people are able to travel down to the platform or up to the concourse at the same time.
“The powertrain of the Khatai escalators is a double-drive with two transmissions. Each 66kW asynchronous motor is attached to a worm gear slip-on gearbox followed by a spur gear transmission with the 3t heavy main shaft,” says the spokesperson. “The powertrain architecture is basically similar for all escalators: the drive unit, consisting of a motor and gearbox, and a second transmission via a chain drive or spur gear. Single drive is possible up to approximately 9m rise.
“The powertrain of a high-rise escalator is about seven to eight times heavier than a heavy-duty escalator with average rise. The handrail is driven by a separate asynchronous drive, which is synchronised to the main drive.”
Despite the speed of 0.75 metres per second, the sheer length of the escalators means that it takes passengers almost two and a half minutes to get from one end to the other.
It is, in fact, so long that from the top you cannot see the bottom of the escalators, which each have 527 steps.
Asked why smaller escalators that are divided by a platform weren’t used, the spokesperson explains: “The design of the tunnel does not allow it to have a platform as this would require completely new tunnels.
"With the special design of the Thyssenkrupp heavy duty escalator, it was possible to retain the tunnel dimension without any modification.”
The only Thyssenkrupp escalators longer than this – bridging a height of 53m – have been manufactured for the Moscow Metro, but they have not yet been installed. These three escalators were manufactured in 2018 and will serve station Okruzhnaya in Moscow. The installation is likely to start in 2020 and commissioning will be approximately one year later.
ON THE MOVE
Take a look at any global map and you’ll see that there are many countries – and the Black Sea – between Germany and Azerbaijan. Therefore, getting the 100m escalators from the factory in Hamburg to Azerbaijan – or moved 3,800 km – required 36 trucks. Two routes were selected. Route one saw the trucks travel via Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, before arriving in Azerbaijan, while route two saw the trucks travel from Germany, through Poland, Belarus, Russia and Georgia, before arriving in Azerbaijan (see map, p12).
Each steel giant had to be disassembled and transported separately to the construction site. Because of the vast heights and weight of the parts involved, workers in Hamburg also had to use scaffolding to climb up the individual components and to adjust parts of the escalator.
“Victoria Tube, [the ‘most rugged escalator’ available from Thyssenkrupp (https://is.gd/fihazi)], is designed in a modular concept that allows us to deliver any rise from 3m to 75m. The upper (with the drive unit) and lower landings are built separately from the middle segments, which will be installed between the upper and lower part. For Khatai, there are 15 middle parts of 6m each and one variable middle part of approximately 4m,” explains the Thyssenkrupp spokesperson. “The balustrade of the middle parts is disassembled to facilitate the transport. This allows it to ship four middle parts on one truck. One truck each is needed for the drive unit, for the upper part and for the lower part. The last two trucks carry the electrical components and all disassembled materials. In total, nine trucks for one escalator were sent to Baku.”
The weight of each escalator is 75 tonnes and the length of the step chain of each of the four escalators is 1.7 km. In terms of installation, the escalators were installed from the bottom to the top – first the lower return station, then the middle parts and finally the upper landing, as well as the drive unit, which was installed in the machine room.
The installation of the escalators itself (without any other construction works) took four months, with the installation team, guided by a specialist from the German escalator factory, working in three shifts. Khatai station, however, was closed for about one year.
MAINTENANCE NEEDS
The distance covered by each giant escalator is expected to be around 54 km per day – totalling approximately 19,700 km per year. Furthermore, each escalator will transport around 164,000 people each day – making the annual total just under 60 million passengers.
As energy consumption is concerned, without load, it is approximately 12kW, and with load, it is about 110kW. And, when it comes to maintenance, the metro itself is responsible for carrying out such a task, including lubricating the step chain or greasing bearings. A team of mechanics and electricians is housed within the station and can take care of the escalators 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“In case the escalator stops due to a release of a safety contact, this team is also in charge of troubleshooting. Just imagine one escalator stops in the middle of the ride and you have to walk up the rest by foot. It makes sense to have a fast troubleshooting team directly at the station,” adds the Thyssenkrupp spokesperson.
In addition to escalators, 307 elevators will also be installed to modernise public housing in Baku.
BOX OUT: Width rather than length
The capacity of an escalator in terms of transporting passengers does not depend on the length but rather on the width and the speed, according to Thyssenkrupp Elevator. For example:
● 0.6m width and 0.5m/s = 3,600 persons/h
● 1.0m width and 0.5m/s = 6,000 persons/h (average escalator)
● 1.0m width and 0.75m/s = 8,200 persons/h (0.75m/s is the standard speed in Russia and Azerbaijan). This rather technical data translate into a loading condition of more than one person per step.
The average rise of a heavy-duty escalator depends on the country and its metro system. On average, a metro system in Western Europe is not that deep; the average rise is between 5m and 7m.
In Eastern Europe, the average rise is >20m. Due to the prevailing geology, most of the stations are at a very deep level.