Numerical Simulation of Evacuation in a Subway Station

Abstract

The subway station was built as a rail transit system in the underground; due to its characteristics of closure and a heavy passenger flow, it may cause many deaths and injuries and extensive property damage if an accident occurs, such as a fire. Therefore, the subway safety evacuation is not only one of the important contents of the subway disaster prevention design, but also public safety emphasis and hot issue in the domestic and foreign research field. In the paper, the evacuation in the condition of fire is mainly carried out research. Firstly, the subway passenger flow parameters are caught by the shooting and measurement of the subway station. Finally, the safety egress time is calculated. Then, according to the obtained parameters, Pathfinder simulation software based on technology of Agent is used for simulating and analysing the evacuation process of the personnel. The result indicates that: the station safety egress time is 3min 8s. It accords with ‘code for metro design requirements’; stairs and gates are export bottlenecks during the evacuation, which has a considerable space of optimization in the subway evacuation design.