Lift Report

The awareness that a specific method should exist to test the fire resistance of lift doors has been unquestioned since the early times when lift doors had to be submitted to fire resistance tests. At the time, enormous differences in classification were obtained in different laboratories, even in the same country and to the same national standard. Most lift landing door manufacturers export their products all over Europe and this lack of reproducibility/repeatability was experienced as a major problem.

Elevator ride comfort and elevator ride quality are two distinct and separate concepts that are very subjective but can be very objective depending if you are a passenger, manufacturer, elevator consultant or building owner. This paper will concentrate on the passenger expectations which are very subjective and can also be classified as imaginary as there are multiple sources of experiences transferred to the elevator passenger during a journey, these experiences being both variable or fixed. The variable experiences are changes in the effect of gravity on the human body caused by acceleration, deceleration, jerk and also noise and vibration generated by the elevator systems. The fixed experiences are the architectural design additions to the elevator cars which include lighting, finishes and car furniture.

Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Lipphardt has been appointed general manager by VFA-Interlift as of 1st March 2007 and is thus the first full-time general manager of VFA.