VERTICAL

CIRCULATION IN
BUILDING
Vertical Circulation:
Vertical circulation means, the provision of communication/connation between the
various floors by accesses of various structural elements such as stairs, lifts, ramps and
escalators is called as vertical circulation.

Successful function of a multi-stored building requires circulation of traffic both in

normal use and in emergencies.

A multi-store building can be appreciated by the suitable number of vertical circulation

to be provided and their locations, arrangement and design. The building vertical
circulation can be provided by;
1. Stairs;
2. Ramps;
3. Elevator (Lifts);
4. Escalators.
Stair: A stair is series of steps and it is
provided to connect different floors of a
building is called stair. Stairs can be
constructed by using of various materials like
stones, bricks, timber, steel and reinforced
concrete.
Parts of Stair:
A stair has different parts such as raiser, tread, nosing, landing, flight, hand-rail, newel post,
series of steps etc. shown in below;

Step: This is a portion of stair which is composed of the tread and raiser. This can be
permits ascending or descending from one floor to other floor.

Flight: It is a series of steps without any landing is called as flight.

Tread: It is an upper horizontal part of a step on which foot can be rest. The size of
tread minimum 250mm and maximum 350mm.

Riser: This is vertical distance between the upper face of any two consecutive steps.
The height of this riser depending up on type of building and generally its height is
80mm to 150mm.
 Design of stair:
Design of stair: For design of any stair, the following process should follows;
➢ Firstly the height of room or building should be known.
➢ Secondly we should assume or take the standard height of riser. In generally the height of
raiser from 10cm – 15cm.
➢ Thirdly we should calculate the number of steps for the given room or floor height.

Example: The height of floor (clear distance between ground floor and first floor) is 3.50m.
Assume a riser of 14cm and the tread is 25cm. Design the stair?
Ramp:
A ramp is a sloping surface and it is adopted as a substitute for stair for easy connection
between the different floors.

The usual slope of a ramp is 1 in 15. But a slope of 1 in 10 is suitable. When slope decrease and
it need more space. The surface of the ramp floor should be non-slippery.

Ramp are provided at pleases such as garage, railway stations, stadiums, town halls, office
buildings, hospitals etc. where the movement of large number of persons or vehicles is likely to
be occur.

The ramp should be provided with handrails on both sides. The ramp should be lead directly to
the out side open space on the ground level. The minimum width of the ramp for hospitals
should be 225cm.

Now days moving ramps are provided in multi-stored shopping centers.

Lifts/Elevators:
• Lifts are also called as elevators and they are used for providing vertical
transportation of different floors where buildings having more than 4 stores.
• Lifts can be either electric traction (way to move by application of force) or
hydraulic. Electric traction elevators are used for tall buildings with high passengers
and hydraulic elevators used for low-rise buildings with low passengers.
• The different parts of electric elevator are car or cab, hoist wire, driving machine,
control equipment, counterweight, hoist way or shaft, penthouse and pit.
• The size of the lift depending upon the number of persons to be carried to different
floors, availability of space, number of floors etc.