Dynamics of merging flow involving luggage-laden pedestrians in a Y-shaped corridor: An experimental study

Libi Fu, Yunqian Chen, Huigui Qin, Qiyi Chen, Yangjian He and Yongqian Shi

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2023, vol. 628, issue C

Abstract: Pedestrian movement is complicated in merging flow. Merging layout and angles may restrict pedestrians’ safe movement efficiency. However, the dynamics of a heterogeneous crowd involving luggage-laden pedestrians in merging flow have not been well explained. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impacts of the mixture ratio of luggage-laden pedestrians (i.e., 0, 20% and 50%) and merging angles (i.e., 45°, 60°, 90° and 120°) on the movement of pedestrian merging flow. The software of PeTrack is employed to extract pedestrians’ trajectories in video recordings. Then, the temporal features, fundamental diagrams, passing performance, spatial distribution and crowd danger are analyzed. Results reveal that luggage-laden pedestrians have a negative influence on merging flow. Specifically, the average passing time in each scenario approximately linearly increases with the increasing number of luggage-laden pedestrians. Given the temporal features and fundamental diagrams, the density and flow after merging reduce with the increasing percentage of pedestrians with luggage. The distribution of density is imbalanced before merging in two branches. The speed of pedestrians after merging is higher than that before merging. Considering the average passing time, time headway and spatial distribution, it is found that the traffic efficiency is better under angle 45°. Finally, crowd danger is obtained to explore intrinsic risk in the crowd involving luggage-laden pedestrians. It is hoped that these findings will be helpful for improving traffic efficiency of pedestrian merging flow and providing crowd management strategies.

Keywords: Controlled experiment; Luggage-laden pedestrians; Merging angles; Movement characteristics; Pedestrian safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:628:y:2023:i:c:s0378437123007276

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2023.129172

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