Reliable chains used for flight deck
July 1st 2007 The most valuable surface
vessels for navies are aircraft
carriers and/or large
amphibious operations craft.
The movement of
equipment onboard these
vessels is crucial to their
role. Elevators must be
available whenever
circumstances require it.
This can only be assured
through equipment that has
inherent reliability and low
maintenance requirements.
MacTaggart Scott & Co. of
Edinburgh, is the market
leader in aircraft elevator
technology, with over 40
year's experience of
designing and installing
elevators for the world's
navies. The company also
supplies elevators employed
for handling personnel and
food cargo and heavy lift
with load capacities up to
500 tonnes.
Aircraft elevators typically
come in two distinct
configurations, wire-driven
four-point lift or chain-driven
cantilevered designs.
MacTaggart Scott has
designed, manufactured and
installed both of these
configurations but
experience has
demonstrated that the chaindriven
cantilevered design to
be superior in all respects.
This is because the wiredriven,
four-post lift
configuration was found to
be restrictive on the
surrounding ship design due
to the large jigger
assemblies, turning sheaves
and spaces required to
manage the wires. In
addition, through the life of
the vessels, the wires were
prone to stretch and
unpredictable fatigue
resulting in extensive
maintenance requirements.
Drawing upon past
experience, MacTaggart
Scott designed and
developed a hydraulicallypowered
chain-driven
cantilevered elevator that is
easy to operate, requires
low maintenance and has
minimum restrictions on ship
design. The selection of
modern engineered chains
to provide lift allowed the
use of synchronised rotary
hydraulic motors to provide
the motive power.
The Rexnord chains
selected for platform lifting fit
perfectly with the design
philosophy. Both duplex and
triplex Rexnord chains
have been successfully
fitted to MacTaggart
Scott aircraft elevators
for over 40 years on
multiple installations.
The Royal Navy fleet
support vessel RFA
Argus has two
MacTaggart Scott aircraft
elevators installed which
have operated safely for
over 19 years. The Rexnord
chains fitted to this
installation have been
continually monitored by
MacTaggart Scott and show
no evidence of deterioration.
The longevity of the
chains is ensured through
the quality of chain supplied
by Rexnord. Their simple
maintenance requirements
ensures the limited ship
maintenance staff available
can undertake all necessary
maintenance tasks, resulting
in through-life cost of the
elevator equipment being
kept to a minimum.
A single Rexnord chain
can safely support and
operate the MacTaggart
Scott aircraft elevator, so the
two fitted in typical elevator
installations provide a level
of safety and redundancy
unmatched by wire-drive
alternatives.
The MacTaggart
Scott/Rexnord system is
currently being applied to
the new Royal Navy future
carrier (CVF) programme
and will be employed for the
two 70 tonne SWL deckedge
aircraft elevators being
fitted to these aircraft
carriers. These aircraft
elevators compete in size
with those fitted aboard the
gigantic American aircraft
carriers, but will exceed their
lifting capacity and have
lower maintenance
demands. More articles from Rexnord NV UK: | 
