Abstract
With the increasing number of domestic buildings, the importance of safety evacuation in case of fire in the buildings has been aware. Occupants in a building will crowd at exit(s) when they evacuate in disasters. The content of this study includes the following: (1) to conduct a literature review on severe stampedes in history, identifying the number of casualties, and to explore existing research on crowd evacuation; (2) to examine the applicability of software packages EXODUS and Unity for simulating occupant evacuation using them for simulations under identical conditions; and (3) to construct simulated evacuation environments using Unity and perform simulations with different combinations of occupant number, space size, exit size, and flow diverter size. The simulation results found that placing a flow diverter in front of the exit could reduce the evacuation time effectively. The best result was observed when the width of the door is close to the width of the flow diverter; it can reduce the evacuation time by about 25%. When more than 60 people were emptying through an exit below 120 cm width, the blocking happened regardless of whether a flow diverter was placed.
Highlights
When a disaster occurs inside a building, occupants inside begin to evacuate toward the exits
To examine the applicability of software packages EXODUS and Unity for simulating occupant evacuation using them for simulations under identical conditions
The evacuation time increased linearly with the number of occupants in the EXODUS simulations; in the physical simulations, crowd congestion was observed once the number of occupants had reached a critical value; this phenomenon was similar to the results obtained using Unity
Summary
When a disaster occurs inside a building, occupants inside begin to evacuate toward the exits. When a disaster occurs in a building, the evacuation speed will be slowed down or even blocked This will result in a push phenomenon, which will result in a stampede. The escape scene was simulated by Unity software to investigate the evacuation time for different condition, such as the setup of obstacle, obstacle size, exit width, and evacuation number. To determine how crowd congestion caused by panic or people cutting into flow at exits can be avoided, this study simulated evacuations using the
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
