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Development of a hybrid reliability-centered model for escalator systems

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Abstract

The installation of vertical mobility systems (escalators) in high rise building has increased significantly in the recent past. Escalator systems which have been part of the utilities since the early 60s, has impact not only the movement of people and goods, but businesses that needs them to operate. It has lead to the need for continuous monitoring of the systems for failure by operators and reliability engineers. Although several authors have addressed failure related issue in the escalator system in past, literature has shown however, that the research works have not fully addressed issues relating to the root cause of failure in the system. In this paper, a reliability-centered model has been proposed and used for evaluating the root cause of failure issues in the escalator system by prioritizing the failure modes in the system. Results from the evaluation show that the failure mode 'Failure of the drag chain' has the highest risk and reliability concerns, while the 'Handrail fault' has the least risk and reliability concerns. To further check the feasibility and rationality of the model for addressing flexibility related issues that have become a basic characteristic of the modern fuzzy root cause of failure model, a sensitivity analysis has been performed using two quantitative reliability parameters of the escalator system that is ‘the Mean Distance Between Failure and the Failure Rate’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Port Harcourt, East-West Road, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

    Daniel O. Aikhuele & Grace Ijele-Aikhuele

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  1. Daniel O. Aikhuele
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  2. Grace Ijele-Aikhuele
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Correspondence to Daniel O. Aikhuele.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This paper does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Aikhuele, D.O., Ijele-Aikhuele, G. Development of a hybrid reliability-centered model for escalator systems. Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag 13, 761–771 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-021-01337-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-021-01337-y

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