Results in Engineering, Volume 25, 2025, 104194, ISSN 2590-1230, doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2025.104194

Reliability and Safety of Elevators and Escalators/ Travelators: Past, Present and Future

Ping Kwan Man¹, Chak-Nam Wong¹, Wai Kit Chan¹, Hiu Hung Lee¹, Jingyuan Huang¹, and Michael Pecht^1,2
1 Centre for Advances in Reliability and Safety (CAiRS), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), China
² Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE), University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, MD 20742, USA

For more information about this article and related research, please contact Prof. Michael Pecht.

Abstract:

Elevators, escalators and travelators have been developed to enable people to save time and physical strength when traveling. As places such as shopping malls, hotels and airports have become dependent on these transportation technologies, major problems can occur when they stop working. This paper reviews the historical steps used to address the reliability and safety of these human transportations – technologies and how fault diagnosis, fault detection and health monitoring, and maintenance forecasting are now being implemented, as well as the potential for further advancements.

This article is available for free online here.