Human Body Size in Lift Traffic Design

Calculations and simulations in lift traffic design assume a certain passenger capacity of a lift, i.e. the maximum number of passengers the lift can accommodate. Industry standards define the passenger capacity by dividing the rated load of a lift by the average weight of a passenger. An alternative approach divides the car area by the area of a body ellipse, which models the space requirement of a passenger. Lift safety standards assume a significantly smaller area per passenger than the typical body ellipse. This implies that area-based passenger capacity is smaller than loadbased, and, therefore, also the lift group handling capacity becomes smaller. This paper reviews statistics of human body dimensions from existing literature. Body ellipses drawn from the dimension distributions as well as the typical body ellipse are used to study how many passengers fit in standard-sized lifts. Traditionally, lift group service quality has been evaluated by passenger waiting time and time to destination. This paper proposes a new service quality metric for the area available to passengers. Body sizes vary from one country to the next, in different kinds of buildings, as well as they evolve over the course of time. Therefore, the definition of passenger capacity as well as adequate space for comfortable travel needs to be periodically redefined according to local practices.