Question

You are an engineer in charge of designing a new generation of elevators for a prospective upgrade to the Empire State Building. Before the state legislature votes on funding for the project, they would like you to prepare a report on the benefits of upgrading the elevators. One of the numbers that they have requested is the time it will take the elevator to go from the ground floor to the 102nd floor observatory. They are unlikely to approve the project unless the new elevators make the trip much faster than the old elevators. If state law mandates that elevators cannot accelerate at greater than 2.40 m/s2 or travel faster than 17.3 m/s, what is the minimum time in which an elevator can travel the 373 m from the ground floor to the observatory floor?

Answer 1

The elevator starts from rest at the ground floor and accelerates with maximum acceleration a_max and reaches a maximum velocity V max in time t1 . Then elevator moves with constant velocity V max , for time t2,

Then it starts decelerating with maximum deceleration -a_max in time t3 until the elevator stops.