In recent years, the trend toward taller buildings has made the continued operation of elevators after earthquakes an increasingly important issue. Conventional seismic design for elevators has mainly focused on inertial forces caused by earthquakes, while the effects of building story drift on elevator behavior have not been clearly understood. Furthermore, investigation reports on elevator damage from recent moderate to large earthquakes have confirmed that derailments of counterweights caused by guide rail deformation are highly likely to result in prolonged service suspension. In this study, we experimentally investigated the effects of building story drift angles induced by earthquakes on the behavior of elevator guide rails. A static loading test was conducted using actual elevator components—including counterweights, guide rails, and surrounding parts—mounted on a single-story steel pin frame. Story drift was applied to the frame in one direction using a hydraulic jack, and reaction forces, displacements, and strains were measured. As a result, by reproducing the strain data obtained from the experiment with a composite model consisting of fixed–fixed and simply supported beams, the influence and factors of story drift angle on the elevator guide rails were identified. In addition, a comparison with the seismic design calculations specified in the technical standards revealed several issues requiring consideration.
Onuma et al. (Thu,) studied this question.