エスカレータ手摺のスチールワイヤ検査装置

抄録

The handrail of an escalator has steel wires built into the resin coating as a tensile carrier. When the handrail deteriorates due to the bending motion of the handrail, the steel wires break and the strand flies out onto the surface of the handrail, which may lead to a user accident. As a result, measures have been taken to shorten the replacement cycle of handrails. However, as the replacement cycle is shortened and the number of replacements increases, the convenience of escalators decreases. Therefore, there is a need to ensure the safety of handrails by inspecting abnormalities in steel wires and to optimize the number of handrail replacements. We have developed a magnetic inspection system that uses a magnetic image sensor to measure changes in the magnetic field distribution on the surface of the handrail caused by abnormalities in the steel wires and inspects the condition of the steel wires. In this paper, we report the measurement results using a sample handrail that simulates a steel wires anomaly using the magnetic inspection system.