Vibrations from elevator traction machines may transmit to the nearby room and cause of the noise. For cases where it is difficult to reduce such noise with common measures, we propose employing an active mass damper (AMD) system which has a new actuator. This actuator has a simple construction which enables low production cost and generates sufficient force at frequencies higher than 100Hz. In a basic study, we installed the new AMD system to a traction machine and investigated the vibration reduction performance. We describe the construction of the new actuator and show the performance of this system.

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The counter weight is the most critical elevator component for the seismic load. To improve the seismic reliability of the counter weight is the most important issue to improve that of the total elevator system. Then, we investigated the analytical modeling method to evaluate the dynamic response and the seismic reliability of the counter weight. In this paper, we made the analytical model that could simulate the past shake test results of the counter weight, the guide span of which was longer than the rail support span. Moreover, we applied the developed method to the simulation of the counter weight in the shortened frame that had been recently used in many elevators.

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The seismic-proof design for the elevator system is important subject to maintain vertical transportation in buildings after an earthquake. If an earthquake is detected immediately, elevators can switch their service to proper earthquake emergency operations and, as such, prevent any trouble. Therefore, in this paper, seismic detector levels are evaluated numerically. Three new seismic-proof systems are also introduced. One of the systems is the emergency operation with the earthquake early warning system. Second one is detection of long-period ground motion and its emergency operation. Final one is the automatic diagnosis and recovery system after an earthquake.

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The passenger guide method to offer best information when the disaster and the breakdown occurred was examined. It's necessary to offer the most suitable information according to the user's psychological change in an emergency situation to do misgiving reduction in case of emergency and certain behavior directions. The passenger information system which was achieved by LCD carposition indicator and optimized sound information is described.

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Evacuation methods using elevators and stairs are studied in tall buildings with several zones. We have developed an evacuation method which gives the shortest evacuation time in fire emergency. In the egress, the occupants in fire zone use stairs, and the occupants in the other zones use normal elevators. The proposed method has features in the elevator control method, the use of stairs in early stage and the use of elevator in last stage. The control method of the occupants who use stairs is very important. The comparison between the proposed method and the method proposed by Sekizawa et al. is shown in detail.

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This paper describes a design and assessment method of fire evacuation plan with elevator. This method has two steps. In the first step, the zone evacuation method is selected as the best evacuation method according to the assessment result of safeness, qualitative evacuation time, and cost. In the second step, escape floors are optimized to make minimize evacuation completion time, which is calculated with combination of the calculation method of stairway evacuation and the elevator capability. These calculation methods are prescribed by government or elevator manufacture association. In the third steps, we evaluate safety with rank-matrix method, and select building safety measures with the evaluation results. The design results for the actual building with this method, shows the evacuation completion time is decreased less than 50% of the time without elevator.

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About the main strength part of the elevator, it was a welding structure body mainly conventionally. Therefore, with the introduction of the new plant, we reviewed conventional structure and planned one molding of the structure part for reduction in a part mark and a welding process. For the structural strength part of the middle plate, we gave plasticity processing (reducing work) in this and on earth established molding structure. We report below an example.

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Recently in accordance with expanding of Chinese and Asian markets, global contest of elevator industry, its development time is shortening. And numerical analysis using simulation is effective tool for developing compact elevator system and meeting the diverse needs of building. So we develop elevator simulation model for cage vibration reduction using numerical analysis software and we find and report effective parameters.

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The escalator is a multi-drive type, and features several drive units under the steps inside the truss. The linear drive method is adopted, with drive rollers above and pressure rollers below delivering handrail power. It is requested to design of drive unit, handrail should be synchronized with step. Moreover, in order for escalators to perform safely, reliably and efficiently day in and day out over a period of years and even decades. In this study, the robust design using quality engineering (the Taguchi methods) applied to new handrail-drive-devices to get initial performance and robustness. This study shows that quality engineering is effective for stabilizing the handrail-drive-devices.

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