Proposal and effectiveness verification of rail adjustment optimization method for elevator installation

In the installation process of an elevator, work performs to correct the bending of the rail in order to suppress the lateral vibration of the car due to the irregularity of the guide rail. In this work, each rail bracket is adjusted so that the cutting edge of the rail is in the specified horizontal position with respect to the piano wire. However, since the rail is bent at the joint, irregularities remain even if the brackets are lined up in a straight line. Such a method cannot suppress the lateral vibration of the car and may worsen it. In this research, we proposed a method of optimizing the rail shape to minimize the vibration of the car based on a rail behavior model in that adjustment process and a car vibration model. The effect was verified in an experiment using an actual elevator. In the elevator system, large vibration had been occurred because the periodic excitation force determined by the running speed and rail bending period matched the natural frequency of the car. By adjusting the rails based on proposed method, we avoided resonance and reduced lateral vibration by 37%. This verification showed that the use of the proposed method enabled significant vibration reduction in a short period of time.