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Title:

Simulation Study of Stop-and-Go Waves in Crowd Dynamics during Rail Tunnel Evacuation

Accession Number:

01595128

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Similar to the wave phenomena in particle or fluid flow systems, periodically alternation between stop and go phases can be observed in dense crowd flows, such as simple single lane pedestrian flow. One similar case with single lane pedestrian flow in reality is the evacuation process of passengers from a rail tunnel through the walkways, except that rail tunnel evacuation may involve more complex scenarios such as pedestrians walking side-by-side or crowd flow at turning points of walking path. Even though there is no official record so far reporting stop-and-go wave phenomenon during rail tunnel evacuation, this topic is worthy of being explored. This paper presents a simulation study of the evacuation process in a twin-tunnel. People are required to evacuate from one of the tubes to another tube through cross-passageways. An agent-based pedestrian flow simulation model is used to simulation the evacuation process and the stop-and-go wave phenomena are observed in the simulations. The mechanisms of the occurrence and propagation of the stop-and-go waves are quantitatively analyzed in detail. The results reveal that the perpendicular corner is one of the major reasons for the stop-and-go waves. And the crowd turbulences could be eased by replacing the perpendicular corner with a round-turn corner. Higher heterogeneity of the walking speeds would cause more turbulence and reduce the evacuation efficiency more significantly. The walkway width is not the reason for generating the turbulences but it was found that the propagation of the turbulences is related to whether the walkway can perfectly fit an integer number of people walking side by side at the same time. This study is helpful for better understanding of the stop-and-go crowd wave phenomenon and provides guidance for improving the evacuation efficiency when rail tunnel evacuation scenario is concerned.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB45 Standing Committee on Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics.

Monograph Accession #:

01584066

Report/Paper Numbers:

16-4651

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Liu, S B
Lo, S M
Ma, J
Wang, W L
Tsui, K L

Pagination:

15p

Publication Date:

2016

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Subject Areas:

Operations and Traffic Management; Railroads; Security and Emergencies

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-4651

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 12 2016 6:03PM