Лучшие характеристики пассажирских лифтов для высотных зданий

Every tall building shares one thing. The elevator system decides how the building feels to use. A high-rise passenger elevator is not a mid-rise elevator placed in a taller shaft. Above a certain height, the design logic changes. The shaft takes a larger share of the floor plate. Waiting times grow faster than travel times. And a decision made during design stays with the building for twenty years.

This guide explains what the best passenger elevator features for high-rise buildings really are, how to read the numbers behind them, and what to check before you sign a contract.

Why a High-Rise Building Needs a Different Elevator

In a low-rise building, one group of elevators usually serves every floor. That works because the building is short. The number of stops is small, the travel distance is short, and the shaft takes a modest part of each floor.

In a high-rise, the same approach breaks down. Two problems appear at once.

The first is core space. If every elevator serves every floor, the shafts have to run the full height of the building. The taller the building, the larger the share of each floor plate that goes to elevators. Sellable or rentable area shrinks on every level.

The second is travel time. If one elevator serves too many floors, the number of stops grows. A passenger going to a high floor waits while the car stops again and again on the way up. At some point the journey becomes unacceptable, no matter how fast the car moves.

Industry practice sets a practical limit on this. CIBSE Guide D, the standard British reference for elevator traffic planning, suggests serving a maximum of 15 to 16 floors with one elevator or one elevator group. Above that, the building should be divided into sections.

A worked example makes the scale clear. Take a 60-floor office building with 50 people per floor. Set the design requirement at an up-peak handling capacity of 12 percent and a maximum interval of 30 seconds. These are normal targets for office traffic. Under these conditions, the building needs four separate zones, each served by its own group of elevators. This is where an elevator traffic analysis starts, and it is the reason a high-rise design cannot be copied from another project.

The important point is this. The numbers that decide whether the elevators in a high rise building are adequate are handling capacity и interval. They are not the car capacity printed on a catalogue page. Any proposal for an elevator for high-rise buildings should start with these two figures.

The 8 Features That Define a High-Rise Passenger Elevator

The rest of this section covers the eight features that separate a genuine passenger elevator for high-rise buildings from an oversized mid-rise unit. For each one, the same three questions apply: what it is, how to read the number, and what evidence you should ask the supplier to provide.

1. Speed Matched to Building Height

Speed matters because it shortens the round trip time. A faster car serves the same stops in less time, which reduces waiting for everyone.

Common guidance for high-rise elevator speed by building height:

For a high-rise project, a traction system capable of at least 5 m/s (about 1,000 ft/min) is a reasonable starting point. Super-tall buildings often run at 10 m/s or more. The fastest passenger elevators in service today reach 21 m/s, at the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre.

Speed is not a standalone target, though. In a zoned building, the higher zones normally receive the faster elevators so that the round trip time is similar for every zone. A zone that reaches higher floors needs more speed to cover the same cycle in the same time.

Ask the supplier: show me the calculation that connects this speed to my building height and zoning.

2. Capacity That Comes From a Traffic Study

Car capacity is a result, not a starting point. It follows from the number of people, the peak demand and the target interval.

Typical high-rise elevator capacity ranges:

A 1,600 kg car, which carries about 21 passengers, is a common size for a main passenger elevator in a commercial building.

The mistake is treating these figures as a menu. A 1,600 kg car may be right for one building and wrong for another with the same height. What matters is whether the capacity was derived from the population and the peak demand.

Ask the supplier: how was this capacity calculated from my floor populations and traffic pattern?

3. Traffic Performance: Handling Capacity and Interval

This is the part most buyers skip and most suppliers explain badly. It is also the single most important part of a high-rise elevator design.

Three linked numbers describe how well a system performs.

Round trip time (RTT). The time a car takes to leave the main floor, serve all its probable stops, reach the highest call and return. RTT depends on speed, acceleration, the number of probable stops, the number of passengers per trip and the door times.

Interval. The round trip time divided by the number of cars in the group. This is the average time a passenger waits at the landing before a car arrives. It is the number passengers actually notice.

Handling capacity. The percentage of the building population the group can move in five minutes during the busiest peak. The five-minute window is the standard measure because it captures the worst part of the morning.

For office buildings, an up-peak handling capacity of 12 percent with a maximum interval of 30 seconds is a common design target. Residential, hotel and mixed-use buildings use different targets, because their peaks are gentler and spread over a longer period.

A round trip time calculation is normally enough for the first pass of an elevator traffic design. Detailed design then uses simulation to test destination control and lunchtime traffic, which behave differently from the morning peak.

Ask the supplier: give me the probable stops, the round trip time, the resulting interval and the handling capacity percentage for my building. If they cannot produce these, the proposal is not a design. It is a guess.

4. Drive and Control Technology

Above a certain height, hydraulic drives are no longer an option. Hydraulic elevators suit short travel and low speed, and they are normally chosen for heavy loads. A high-rise passenger elevator uses traction.

The current standard for high-rise work is a gearless permanent magnet synchronous machine paired with a variable voltage variable frequency (VVVF) drive. Each part contributes something specific.

Gearless permanent magnet machine. Higher efficiency than a geared machine, lower noise, better speed control and no gearbox oil to change.

VVVF control. Smooth acceleration and deceleration, precise stopping at the floor, and less mechanical stress on the whole system. This is what makes a fast elevator feel calm.

Ask the supplier: which traction machine and which drive, with model numbers.

5. Ride Comfort at Speed

Travelling hundreds of metres in seconds is unpleasant if the car vibrates or sways. Comfort at high speed is an engineering result, not a matter of interior finishes. It comes from several systems working together:

• permanent magnet synchronous drive
• advanced variable frequency control
• precise leveling accuracy
• high-strength guide rails
• vibration reduction engineering

Poor stability at speed has a second cost. It increases wear on the guide rails and the car frame, which leads to earlier maintenance and a shorter service life.

Noise is a separate issue, and it belongs partly to the building rather than the equipment. Sound insulation for elevator systems is covered by VDI 2566 and VDI 4100, with DIN 4109 governing sound insulation in the building itself. Practical measures include a separate sound-proofed machine room, single-shell shaft walls with adequate mass, double-shell shaft construction to decouple the shaft from the building structure, and keeping bedrooms or quiet rooms away from shaft walls.

Ask the supplier: the guide rail specification, the leveling accuracy in millimetres, and measured noise values rather than a description.

6. Group Control and Destination Dispatch

In a tall building, at least half the performance comes from scheduling rather than hardware. Two elevators with the same machines can deliver very different waiting times depending on how they are controlled.

Group control coordinates the cars in one group so they do not chase the same calls.

Destination dispatch goes further. The passenger enters a destination floor at the landing, and the system assigns the car that produces the shortest overall journey. Passengers heading to the same part of the building travel together, which reduces the number of stops.

The effect is measurable. Destination-based group control has been reported to reduce travel time by up to 30 percent compared with conventional collective control.

There is a trade-off. Passengers must enter their floor before boarding, which changes a habit. Signage and a short learning period are part of the package, not optional extras.

Ask the supplier: a simulation using my floor populations and traffic pattern, not a general claim about their control system.

7. Energy Efficiency

In a tall building, the difference between two designs is large, because the machines run long distances all day. Several features reduce consumption, and they compound.

Regenerative drive. When the car brakes, or travels down with a light load, the motor acts as a generator. Instead of losing that energy as heat, the drive returns it to the building supply. Reported savings for regenerative systems can reach around 50 percent of running energy.

Standby mode. Group control systems with this function place idle cars into a low-power state. Reductions in the region of 40 percent have been reported for control systems with this feature.

LED lighting. Low-power lighting in the car and on the landing panels.

Lighter suspension. Carbon-fibre belts such as KONE UltraRope are about 81 percent lighter than steel rope and allow a single elevator to travel up to 1,000 m, roughly double the limit for steel.

Ask the supplier: whether the drive is regenerative, and the basis for any energy saving figure quoted.

8. Safety and Compliance

Compliance is not a feature you compare between suppliers. It is a floor you must clear, and what it requires depends on the market you are building in.

The standards that matter most for a high-rise passenger elevator:

• EN 81-20 — safety rules for the construction and installation of passenger and goods lifts. The base standard across most of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and much of Asia.
• EN 81-21 — new passenger and goods lifts installed in existing buildings.
• EN 81-28 — remote emergency call for passenger and goods lifts.
• EN 81-70 — accessibility of lifts for persons, including persons with disabilities.
• EN 81-72 — firefighter lifts.
• EN 81-73 — how a lift behaves in the event of fire.
• EN 81-50 — how lift components, calculations and tests are carried out.
• ASME A17.1 — the equivalent base standard for the United States market.

High speed adds hardware requirements on top: overspeed protection, dual braking, emergency electrical operation and redundant monitoring. These are not optional on a car travelling at 6 m/s or more.

Ask the supplier: the type-examination certificates and their numbers, not a statement that the elevator complies with local requirements.

Those eight items are what the best passenger elevator features for high-rise buildings have in common. They are also the eight things to verify in any proposal you receive.

System Choices That Decide Your Core Space

The features above describe one high-rise passenger elevator. At building scale, another set of decisions has a bigger effect on the project. These decisions determine how much of the floor plate goes to elevator shafts, and therefore how much of the building can be used.

In general, taller buildings need a larger proportion of core space for elevators. Several strategies reduce that proportion. Most of them are decided by the developer and the architect rather than the elevator supplier, which is why they must be on the table early.

Zoning. The building is divided into vertical sections, each served by its own group. CIBSE Guide D suggests a maximum of 15 to 16 floors per zone. Increasing the number of zones reduces core space, because fewer elevators run to the top of the building. In the 60-floor example, one zone needs the most core space and four zones the least.

Zoning has a cost. Travel between zones becomes restricted, so buildings normally include a transfer floor where passengers change without returning to the main floor. The position of that floor matters more than it appears. If the transfer floor is itself a served floor, the people working on it will prefer the upper zone’s faster elevator, and they will use it even when the traffic design assumes they do not. Moving the transfer floor one level higher fixes the problem but costs core space.

Double-deck elevators. Two cars are fixed in one frame and serve two adjacent floors at the same time. During peak periods the lower car serves odd floors and the upper car serves even floors, with escalators connecting the lower and upper main floors. The number of stops is halved, so the round trip time falls and the handling capacity per shaft rises. In the 60-floor example, two zones of double-deck elevators use about 2,600 m² of core.

Double-deck elevators carry two constraints. Every floor must be the same height, because the two cars must serve adjacent floors throughout. And because the two cars occasionally stop for a floor only one of them serves, part of the journey is wasted for half the passengers. The share of stops that are useful to both cars is the measure of how well the arrangement performs. A strong control system raises that share.

Two cars per shaft. Two independent cars run in one shaft, the lower car serving a lower section and the upper car an upper section. Core space is similar to a double-deck arrangement. The advantages are real: floor heights need not be equal, and the cars are not physically linked. The disadvantage is that one car may have to wait for the other to move. In practice this system is supplied with destination control, because without knowing destinations the scheduling loses much of its benefit.

Shuttle elevators and sky lobbies. Express elevators carry passengers to one or more sky lobbies part way up the building, where they transfer to local elevators. Removing the express zones from the upper groups frees more core space than the shuttle itself needs. In the example, a double-deck shuttle combined with local double-deck elevators uses about 2,300 m². The cost is that the journey now takes two elevators instead of one.

Ropeless elevators. Cars driven by linear motors can move horizontally as well as vertically, and can run in a loop within two shafts. In the example, a ropeless system serving levels G, 16, 31 and 46 in a loop, with two up shafts and two down shafts, brings core space down to about 1,800 m². Its handling capacity is far above what roped elevators can reach, because the loop keeps cars in constant circulation. This raises the height limit that roped systems impose on very tall buildings.

In practice, most projects combine more than one of these strategies. The final choice balances cost against ease of use, and a design that is efficient on paper is not always pleasant to ride.

One practical instruction runs through all of this. Bring the elevator supplier into the design process before the core is fixed. Once the shaft dimensions and the machine room are set, the remaining options are limited and expensive.

Design Targets by Building Type

The right specification for a high rise building passenger elevator depends on who uses the building and when. The table below summarizes the usual priorities.

These are typical elevator specifications, not fixed rules. The differences are worth stating plainly. In a residential tower, reliability and quiet operation matter more than top speed, because residents use the elevators every day and notice every fault. In an office tower, the challenge is moving a large number of people quickly during the morning and evening peaks, so intelligent group control contributes more than extra cabin finish. In a hotel, the elevator is part of the guest experience, and smooth starting and stopping matters. In a mixed-use building, the control system must manage different traffic patterns and different access rules inside the same core.

Civil and Shaft Conditions to Fix Early

Shaft and pit dimensions for a high-rise passenger elevator are fixed by the structure, so they have to be decided before the structure is built. Changing them later is either impossible or very costly.

Pit depth and overhead height. Every model has its own minimum figures, and they should come from the supplier’s drawings rather than from a general estimate. As a reference point, a typical commercial machine-room-less traction elevator can require a minimum pit of about 1,480 mm and a minimum total overhead of about 4,020 mm. Other models differ significantly.

Machine room, or no machine room. Rope-driven electric elevators conventionally have the machine room above the shaft, and hydraulic elevators have it at the bottom. Machine-room-less (MRL) systems place the machine in the shaft head or the pit. An MRL elevator frees the space and the cost of a separate machine room, but maintenance work is carried out in a more confined space, and the space requirements, travel and speed must be confirmed with the manufacturer rather than assumed.

Fire requirements. The rules differ by market, and they are strict. Following the German Model High-Rise Directive (MHHR), buildings classed as high-rise must have at least two elevators serving every floor, and each elevator must have a fire-protected vestibule in front of the landing door as a safe area. Floor numbers, signs pointing to the nearest required staircase, and signs prohibiting elevator use in a fire must be installed in those vestibules.

Shaft construction and ventilation. Shafts must generally be separate from other spaces. In the German code, up to three elevators are permitted in one shaft, and the fire rating of the enclosing walls follows the building class. Shaft ventilation has to release smoke in a fire, so the shaft head needs an opening with a clear area of at least 2.5 percent of the shaft floor area, and not less than 0.10 m². A smoke and heat exhaust ventilator is the usual solution, since it stays closed in normal operation and opens automatically when needed.

Sound insulation. Covered by VDI 2566 and VDI 4100, with DIN 4109 for the building. This is a planning issue as much as an equipment issue. Position the shaft early so that bedrooms and quiet rooms are not built against shaft walls.

Accessibility. Under DIN 18040, an elevator counts as barrier-free from lift type 2 in DIN EN 81-70. The minimum car size is 1.10 × 1.40 m with a clear door opening of 900 mm, which allows a wheelchair user and an accompanying person to travel together. Type 3 allows several people and lets a wheelchair turn inside the car. Control panels must sit at least 0.90 m and no more than 1.10 m above the floor, and there must be at least 1.50 × 1.50 m of clear space in front of the elevator on every floor.

The figures above are European. Confirm the local code for your market before the design is frozen. A project in the United States, for example, works to ASME A17.1.

What to Check Before You Buy

Most problems with a high-rise passenger elevator are not caused by a bad product. They are caused by a decision made at the wrong moment. These are the seven checks that prevent the expensive ones.

1. Do not choose on initial price alone. A low purchase price usually leads to higher maintenance costs and earlier modernization. Build a twenty-year lifecycle cost comparison, and include energy, maintenance, spare parts and the expected date of the first major overhaul.

2. Do not underestimate the required speed. An undersized speed shows up as long waiting times during peak hours, and complaints follow quickly. The speed has to come from the traffic calculation, not from a similar project.

3. Do not ignore energy efficiency. In a tall building, the running hours are long and the distance travelled is large, so the gap between an efficient design and an average one compounds every year. Ask whether the drive is regenerative and ask for the basis of the savings figure.

4. Do not overlook after-sales support. Every day an elevator is out of service is a day of lost use and complaints. Ask where spare parts are held, what response time is promised, and whether the supplier will still support this model in ten to fifteen years. An elevator outlives its first control system, so the modernization path matters as much as the initial specification.

5. Do not accept a vague traffic calculation. Ask for probable stops, round trip time, interval and handling capacity in writing, for your building. A supplier who answers with a standard car size has not designed anything.

6. Do not treat standards as marketing language. Ask for type-examination certificates and their numbers. “Complies with local requirements” is not evidence, and the gap is usually discovered at inspection, when it is expensive to close.

7. Do not skip factory pre-commissioning. Elevators that undergo full system linkage testing before dispatch typically produce fewer site problems and a smoother handover. Ask whether the system is tested as a linked whole, and ask for the record.

The real cost of a high-rise passenger elevator appears over years, not during bidding.

Часто задаваемые вопросы

What speed does a high-rise elevator need? It depends on height and zoning. Common practice is 2.0 to 2.5 m/s for 10 to 20 floors, 3.0 to 5.0 m/s for 20 to 40 floors, and 6.0 to 10.0 m/s above 40 floors. For high-rise projects, at least 5 m/s is a reasonable starting point. The correct answer, however, comes from the round trip time calculation for your building, not from the floor count alone.

How many passenger elevators does a high-rise building need? The number follows from the handling capacity and interval targets. Industry practice suggests serving no more than 15 to 16 floors with one elevator group. A 60-floor office building with 50 people per floor, designed for a 12 percent up-peak handling capacity and a 30-second maximum interval, needs four zones. The number of cars per zone then follows from the zone population and the round trip time.

Is a machine room-less elevator suitable for a high-rise building? MRL systems are widely used in high-rise projects, including residential towers. They free the space and cost of a separate machine room. Two points need checking: maintenance is carried out in a confined shaft, so service access should be planned; and because MRL designs differ between manufacturers, the space requirements, travel and speed must be confirmed with the supplier rather than assumed.

What is a good waiting time for a high-rise elevator? For office buildings, a maximum interval of 30 seconds during the morning peak is a common design target, and a lower figure is better. Residential and hotel buildings usually work to less demanding targets, because their peaks are spread over a longer period. What matters is that the target is set and that the design is calculated against it.

Traction or hydraulic — which one for a high-rise? Traction. Hydraulic elevators have a practical height and speed limit, and they are normally chosen for heavy loads at low speed. A high-rise passenger elevator uses a gearless traction machine with a variable frequency drive.

What is handling capacity in elevator design? Handling capacity is the percentage of the building population that an elevator group can transport in five minutes during the busiest peak. Together with the interval, it is the standard measure of whether an elevator system is adequate for a building. It is calculated from the round trip time, the number of cars in the group and the number of passengers per trip.

Заключение

The best passenger elevator features for high-rise buildings are not the ones with the highest figures. The right elevator is the one whose traffic numbers were calculated for that specific building. Speed, capacity, drive technology and comfort all matter, but chosen without the calculation they are guesses, and a tall building has no room for guesses.

Five things are worth asking for before you commit: the round trip time calculation, the resulting interval and handling capacity, the type-examination certificates, the twenty-year cost comparison, and the modernization path. A supplier who can answer all five is a supplier who understands high-rise work.

LJ Elevator runs configuration studies for high-rise projects from building height, floor populations and traffic pattern, and provides the supporting calculations with the proposal.