Lutfi Al-Sharif received his Ph.D. in elevator traffic analysis in 1992 from the University of Manchester. He worked for 9 years for London Underground, London, United Kingdom in the area of lifts and escalators. In 2002, he formed Al-Sharif VTC Ltd, a vertical transportation consultancy based in London, United Kingdom.
In 2006, he co-founded the Mechatronics Engineering Department at the University of Jordan, Amman Jordan and progressed to full professor at the University of Jordan, where he spent 13 years as a faculty member, Mechatronics Engineering Department Head for six years and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs.
His research interests include elevator traffic analysis, elevator and escalator energy modelling, mechatronics education, coordinate measuring machines and linear electromagnetic actuators. He is co-inventor of four patents, has around 30 papers published in peer reviewed journals and is co-author of the 2nd edition of the elevator traffic handbook.
Professor Al-Sharif is currently Vice President of Al Hussein Technical University in Amman, Jordan, and a part-time consultant for Peters Research Ltd. He is also a member of the management committee of the lift and escalator symposium.
The Monte Carlo Simulation method (MCS) has been successfully used to find the value of the lift round trip time under general traffic conditions, including cases such as multiple entrances, unequal floor heights, unequal floor populations, rated speed not attained in one floor journey, as well as the variation in group control algorithms (e.g. destination group control).
In conventional Monte Carlo Simulation, the various trials (or scenarios) are completely disconnected, where the end of one trial does not influence the following trial. A previous paper presented the new extension of the Monte Carlo Simulation, by inter-linking each trial or scenario in the Monte Carlo Simulation with the next one, where it links the trials such that the end conditions of one trial become the initial conditions of the following trial. This “interlinking” allows the method to reflect the effect of the random passenger destinations on the value of the round-trip time.
The previous paper examined in details the effect of the first source of randomness in the lift system: the randomness of the origins and destination of passenger. It did not however, examine the effect of the randomness caused by variable passenger inter-arrival time (the following an exponential probability distribution).
The paper will also include the effect of bunching on the value of the round trip time as well as the queue length at the landing.
Enhancing the inter-linked Monte Carlo Simulation Method (iL-MCS) to reflect random passenger inter-arrivals.
Professor Lutfi Al-Sharif.
Al Hussein Technical University, Jordan.