Numerical Simulation of Passenger Evacuation and Heat Fluxes in the Waiting Hall of an Ultralarge Railway Station Hub

Abstract

The resurgence of passenger flows after the pandemic poses a significant challenge to the safe operation of rail transit. Therefore, adopting the waiting hall of an ultralarge railway station hub as an example, thermal radiation and evacuation simulations were conducted by the Fire Dynamics Simulator and Pathfinder, respectively. Island-style shops, known for their high crowd density and fire load, were defined as fire sources, and the effectiveness of a 6 m wide fire isolation zone was validated via the adoption of the dual-validation model. By comparing the relationships between the total evacuation population after passenger flow recovery and various evacuation parameters, it was shown that passengers were not evenly distributed among the exits in the waiting hall during an emergency, leading to uneven utilization. Furthermore, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the evacuation process under simulated fire conditions, an evacuation simulation involving 10,000 evacuees over a duration of 324.8 s was conducted. This study provides a theoretical basis for optimizing fire emergency evacuation plans for ultralarge railway station hubs.