2019 Volume 27 Issue 2 Pages 212-218
Countries with rapidly growing economies are building numerous skyscrapers, where safe and high-speed elevators are important elements. Therefore, the authors have proposed an elevator with magnetorheological fluid damper (i.e., MRF damper) to improve the elevator safety. If a disastrous earthquake occurs, many elevators stop at the nearest floor to evacuate passengers. However, in reality, passengers are sometimes trapped in an elevator during seismic vibrations. In this paper, we use an elevator-simulator that consists of a semi-active MRF damper, a spring and verify experimentally whether the proposed MRF damper can absorb strong vibrations of elevators caused by earthquakes.