Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : Dynamics and Design Conference 2021
Date : September 13, 2021 - September 17, 2021
Fall accidents of escalators occurred in the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake. The Escalator whose accident occurred was connected the second floor to the third floor in commercial facilities of the steel frame building. In general, escalators are set on beams of buildings. Furthermore, one side or both sides of the support are not fixed because of preventing damage to the escalator from the interlaminar deformation of the building. However, the interlaminar deformation of the building occurred more than expected by the great earthquake. In consequence, the fall accidents occurred because the escalators came off from the beams of the buildings. After the escalator accidents, the seismic standard was revised in Japan. The interlayer displacement angle of buildings was considered more than before. From this, the overlap allowance is longer so the possibility of the fall accidents decreases so much. However, an unfixed part of the escalator may collide with a building beam due to the earthquake. Furthermore, the escalator may transform by the collision and affect to the safety of themselves. Accordingly, in this study, the dynamic behavior of the escalator with the building beam during earthquakes is investigated, furthermore the safety against the revised earthquake resistance standards is confirmed. In this paper, the analysis methods for the safety evaluation is investigated a three-meter lift escalator, which has fallen due to an earthquake. The 3/10 scale model based on the three-meter lift escalator which the top is not fixed was created. Further, the vibration experiment with the 3/10 scale escalator model was carried out. The behavior of the 3/10 scale escalator model was confirmed during the earthquakes. Moreover, the seismic response analysis was carried out with the lumped mass models. The restoring force characteristics of the escalator were modeled by bilinear method. The validity of the analysis model was confirmed by comparing the analysis results with the experimental results. In addition, four patterns of actual escalators were evaluated.
