UAE Project Circular Elevator on Ship

The Challenge: No Headroom, No Compromise

UAE Project
Circular Elevator on Ship

Shaft Size: 1780mm Diameter

Load Capacity: 500kg

Speed: 0.4m/s

Door Opening: Automatic Central  Curved Door

Story begins…..

A high-profile client in the UAE came to us with an ambitious request.

A custom round traction elevator.

Installed on a luxury vessel.

Built entirely from steel.

And — one problem — almost zero overhead space above the car.

On a normal building, headroom is taken for granted. But on a ship? Every centimeter of vertical space is already claimed by decks, systems, and structure. A conventional top-drive traction elevator was simply impossible.

Most elevator companies would have said: “Not feasible.”

We said: “Let’s turn the elevator upside down.”

The Solution: Bottom Drive. No Top Extension.

Instead of forcing the machine onto the top, our engineering team relocated the entire traction machine to the bottom of the hoistway – inside a custom-protected steel enclosure.

This wasn’t a simple “move the motor down.” It required:

Full re-engineering of the load path

Normally, a traction elevator pulls from above. Here, traction and tension had to be rebalanced from below.

A completely redesigned steel round structure

The round steel car and circular guide system had to maintain perfect alignment without a top machine beam.

Marine-adapted electrical and control systems

Vessel motion, humidity, and limited access meant industrial-grade vibration dampening and corrosion protection.

Zero top clearance operation

The elevator now runs with no overhead machine room and no structural penetration into the deck above.