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Abstract
Elevators play major role in transportation system of a building and provide a great
deal of influence to the total function of a building, especially if the usage and
numbers of elevator is not properly planned. The lift shafts are not easily modified in
later stages of building development. Therefore the fundamental elevator design must
be planned at the very beginning. This paper attempts to analyse the performance of
elevator traffic in office buildings
INTRODUCTION
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Usually performance criteria are the handling capacity and the interval
calculated in the up-peak situation. The up-peak situation is used since it is the most
demanding situation considering elevator handling capacity at least in office
buildings, and because there are analytical formulas for calculating the up-peak
handing capacity and interval.
The application of different options also changes with the type of building
(residential, office, hotel, mixed purpose, special purpose), and different elevator
suppliers can offer different solutions. Any one of them could entail:
Direct elevatoring from the main entrance (including sky lobbies) fed by
express elevators from the main entrance;
Handicapped requirements;
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Performance Measures
Round trip time for up-peak is the time required for an elevator to serve car calls
given from the entrance floor and the return back to the lobby. The round trip time
starts from the door opening at lobby and ends with door opening.
Interval is the average time between elevator departures from the entrance floor
during up-peak. It equals round-trip time divided by the number of elevators in the
group.
Waiting time (WT) is time between passenger arrival at the landing call floor and
entrance to the elevator.
Journey Time (JT) / Service Time is the total time from entering the waiting
area to exiting the elevator
Travel time is the elevator running time from the lowest served floor to the
highest served floor with nominal speed.
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Call time is the time required to serve a landing call, which is time between call
registration and cancellation. A call is cancelled when the elevator starts to
decelerate to the landing call floor.
Core area is the floor space taken up by the hoistways and waiting areas as the
elevators rise in the building.
Hall Call Registration Time is the time that elapses between registration of a hall
call and the arrival of the elevator.
Real data
Data availabilities
In elevator systems, the use of the system waiting time is the priority objective
to attain an efficient system performance, at the same time as having a bounded
maximum waiting time. The system waiting time includes the waiting time for the lift
in the hall plus the trip time inside the lift. Also, other secondary criteria are used as
the queue sizes or the system energetic consumption.
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The waiting time data was not captured or monitored by the authority such as
Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). Even though every elevator
(except for domestic used) is required to obtain permission to install and Certificate of
Fitness from DOSH Head Quarter and DOSH State Office respectively. The
authorities are not controlling on the elevators traffic, but more on things that can
affect directly the safety, health and welfare of the elevators passengers (what was
written in the Act and Regulations).
Most of the new buildings are high-rise; the progressive price increase in the
urban centres of the larger cities makes the necessary intensive ground exploitation by
means of the construction of high buildings.
Under the By-Law 124 and 243 (1), Uniform Building By-Laws, 1984, for all
non-residential buildings exceeding 4 storeys above or below the main access level at
least one lift shall be provided; and all building with the top occupied floor is over
than 18.5 meters above the fire appliance access level, fire lift shall be provided.
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Cost
The floor area occupied by the elevator group consists of the shaft space and
the waiting area for passengers. In high-rise buildings the population is large and
distances are long, thus the portion of shafts is large compared to the total floor area.
This means more costs, since the rent-able area is reduced. It is very important to
determine the optimise number of the elevator, size, speed and other elevators
performance criteria.
The cost of an elevator system consists of initial cost, operational cost and
maintenance cost. The right elevators to the building can give high efficiency and cost
benefit; but it is also important to consider on downtime cost.
Passengers Satisfactoriness
One of the factors that can affect the value of a building is an elevator
performance. If the elevators performance is good, there will be less complaining
from the passengers / tenant / customer and the value of the building will be higher. A
proper study and update on the customer satisfactoriness such as their waiting time,
queue and journey time is very important especially during peak time.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
For a better performance, we have to consider all the factors that can
contribute for the better performance and to avoid the factors that can affect the
performance of the lifts.
Provide only one main entrance (can use escalator or other lift such as carpark lift to main entrance)
Having public areas (banking hall, ballroom, stock trading floor, etc.) on an
upper floors,
Passenger elevators serving car park floors above the main lobby.
Dedicated lift for VVIP should be considered from the earlier stage. Taken one lift
from the grouping can affect the whole lifts performance.
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Table 1 - 6 illustrate some of the characteristics of lift performance for the purpose of
comparisons.
Estimate Population
10-12 m net area/person
15-18 m net area/person
11 15
-Prestige
15 17
15
-Prestige
15 17
25 30
-Prestige
20 25
25 30
-Prestige
20 25
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Quality of service
20
Excellent
25
Very Good
30
Good
40
Poor
50
Unsatisfactory
TYPES OF BUILDING
FACTORS
Population
Office Buildings
Floor area
Number of rooms
Morning up:
Morning down
normally prime
Evening two-
determinant
way: normally
Noon two-way
prime
Evening down
determinant
30 sec intervals
Traffic Conditions
Quality of Service
times
Quality of Service
Hotels
10%-15% up
handling capacity
35-45 sec
Apartments
bedrooms
Two-way
45-90 sec
intervals
intervals
time
6%-9% two-way
handling capacity
30-60 sec
waiting time
service time
Number of
5% two-way
handling
capacity
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Goal
Categories of Buildings
5-Minute Lift
Capacity
General conditions of
Used exclusively by
location
one company
Office Building
General conditions of
Partially exclusive
location
use
Government office
location
Vicinity of subway and
electric railway
Room lease, block
lease
Leased office
Floor lease
Hotel
Average
Operation
Interval
20-30%
23-25%
16-18%
Bellow 30
seconds, but in
18-20%
case of
sufficient
14-16%
capacity, 30-40
seconds is
16-18%
allowed.
11-13%
13-15%
40
10%
Below
Business hotel
Apartment, mansion
7%
3-5%
sec.
50
sec.
Below 40 sec.
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REFERENCES
Barney G. C., dos Santos S.M., Elevator Traffic Analysis, Design and Control,
Peter Peregrinus Ltd., London, (1985).
George
Strakosch.
Vertical
Transportation,
2nd
Edition.
(New
York:
Albertson)(1982).