Computational environment for Simulating Impact of Building Sway on High Rise Lifts

In high wind conditions, tall buildings are subjected to sway, which creates a challenge in maintaining passenger comfort and safety. The lift performance may need to be reduced or the lift service may even need to be suspended in severe conditions; however, since the lifts are a key service of a building, any reduction in their performance may cause substantial loss of revenue. Therefore, there is a strong demand on the one hand to maximize the lift service availability as long as it is safe, and on the other hand, to demonstrate the impact of sway countermeasures on the performance of the lift system in advance. This article explains how a computational environment that models a lift system in building sway conditions is built based on a segmented approach. The first part consists of the main lift model, which utilises the building and lift data and is able to run the lift, based on recorded or simulated lift calls. It also implements the operational mode it receives from the real-time rope sway calculator. This model forms the second part of the environment and it calculates rope amplitudes based on recorded or simulated building motion and car position from the main model and determines the appropriate operational model. The third part consists of the rope sway analysis tool, which provides precalculated amplification data for the real-time calculation model, the full-scale rope sway simulation tool, which acts as a reference for result validation, and the building motion calculator. All simulations are based on the modelling of the physical events. This environment can be used to predict lift system performance on future buildings and to test the efficiency of different sway control strategies, and the visualisation of results allows effective communication between different parties in high rise building projects.