This paper took the broken drive chain in an escalator reverse accident as the research object,and analyzed the failure mechanism of the escalator drive chain.The surface of the chain plate in the drive chain is decarburized due to improper heat treatment process,which significantly reduces the surface hardness of the chain plate and accelerates the fatigue fracture of the chain plate.It was mainly caused by fatigue fracture of the composite transition chain plate,which was due to the stress concentration effect at the bending corner.At the same time,reasonable countermeasures were put forward on the link structure selection,heat treatment process and processing and assembly process of the drive chain.