The HKIE-SSC Student Project Competition, organized by The Hong Kong Institute of Engineers (HKIE), is an important annual event to attract HK young generation currently studying in universities to explore safety & health engineering for a touch of both life-critical systems and popular science innovation. The objectives of the competition are to promote safety engineering and science innovation, and to provide an open and competitive platform for engineering students to demonstrate their engineering capabilities and share the learning process in safety regime.
This year, a PolyU ME year 3 student, JIANG Jiacong, presented a novel design about improving the testing method of elevator over-speed governor during periodic elevator examination. His innovative idea was acclaimed by the judges and awarded the CIC award. He was the only undergraduate winner in the safety category among other postgraduate awardees. The award ceremony was held in the 25th HKIE-SSC Annual Dinner organized by the HKIE – Safety Specialist Committee on 14 Jan 2020.
Over-speed governor (GOV) is equipment to monitor and limit the moving speed of elevator cars. The maintenance and examination are therefore very essential in elevator annual test. However, the testing method of GOV using nowadays is still traditional, inconvenient and complicated with low accuracy, which also includes some safety problems. Therefore, it is highly relevant to develop a safer, more efficient, more accurate and user-friendly solution. Based on the analysis and understanding of existing safety problems, a novel testing device is designed, which can conveniently and safely measure the speed with an optical tachometer, and simultaneously accelerate the governor wheel with an electric disc so as to identify whether the GOV is qualified. Preliminary results show clearly the advantages of this new invention and prospects of being widely popularized.
The project was supervised by Dr Xingjian Jing of the Department, who has been actively working on solving various critical engineering problems including system control, engineering noise & vibration, energy harvesting, structural health monitoring, complex system identification, sensing and measuring systems, custom-tailored robotic systems and so on. For Dr Jing’s research and development, it can be referred to www.polyu.edu.hk/me/people/academic-teaching-staff/jing-xingjian/
It is always welcomed for those who wish to realize his/her creative ideas into engineering practices to contact Dr Jing cordially striving for an innovative future. Several undergraduate FYP projects and MSc/PhD projects under his supervision achieved impactful results exposed in media news, prestigious awards and top journal publications in the past years.
