Revisit the faster-is-slower effect for an exit at a corner

The faster-is-slower effect (FIS), which means that crowd at a high enough velocity could significantly increase the evacuation time to escape through an exit, is an interesting phenomenon in pedestrian dynamics. Such phenomenon had been studied widely and has been experimentally verified in different systems of discrete particles flowing through a centre exit. To experimentally validate this phenomenon by using people under high pressure is difficult due to ethical issues. A mouse, similar to a human, is a kind of self-driven and soft body creature with competitive behaviour under stressed conditions. Therefore, mice are used to escape through an exit at a corner. A number of repeated tests are conducted and the average escape time per mouse at different levels of stimulus are analysed. The escape times do not increase obviously with the level of stimulus for the corner exit, which is contrary to the experiment with the center exit. The experimental results show that the FIS effect is not necessary a universal law for any discrete system. The observation could help the design of buildings by relocating their exits to the corner in rooms to avoid the formation of FIS effect.

[1]  Mohcine Chraibi,et al.  Generalized centrifugal-force model for pedestrian dynamics. , 2010, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[2]  D. C. Rapaport,et al.  Molecular dynamics studies of granular flow through an aperture , 1997 .

[3]  Daniel R. Parisi,et al.  Experimental evidence of the "Faster is Slower" effect in the evacuation of ants , 2012 .

[4]  Tong Ran,et al.  An experimental study of the “faster-is-slower” effect using mice under panic , 2016 .

[5]  K. Nishinari,et al.  Introduction of frictional and turning function for pedestrian outflow with an obstacle. , 2009, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[6]  Angel Garcimartín,et al.  The Conference in Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2014 ( PED 2014 ) Experimental evidence of the “ Faster Is Slower ” effect , 2014 .

[7]  D. Helbing,et al.  Analysis of Empirical Trajectory Data of Pedestrians , 2010 .

[8]  J. Drury,et al.  Modelling subgroup behaviour in crowd dynamics DEM simulation , 2009 .

[9]  Dirk Helbing,et al.  Simulating dynamical features of escape panic , 2000, Nature.

[10]  I Zuriguel,et al.  Flow and clogging of a sheep herd passing through a bottleneck. , 2015, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[11]  Mark E. J. Newman,et al.  Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data , 2007, SIAM Rev..

[12]  Gabriel Pérez,et al.  Numerical simulations in granular matter: The discharge of a 2D silo , 2008 .

[13]  Alexander John,et al.  Trafficlike collective movement of ants on trails: absence of a jammed phase. , 2009, Physical review letters.

[14]  Tong Ran,et al.  An experimental study of the impact of an obstacle on the escape efficiency by using mice under high competition , 2017 .

[15]  George G. Adams,et al.  Contact modeling — forces , 2000 .

[16]  Siuming Lo,et al.  A granular dynamic method for modelling the egress pattern at an exit , 2007 .

[17]  Dirk Helbing,et al.  Specification of the Social Force Pedestrian Model by Evolutionary Adjustment to Video Tracking Data , 2007, Adv. Complex Syst..

[18]  Daniel R. Parisi,et al.  Faster-is-slower effect in escaping ants revisited: Ants do not behave like humans , 2014, 1410.5261.

[19]  Angel Garcimartín,et al.  Experimental proof of faster-is-slower in systems of frictional particles flowing through constrictions. , 2015, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[20]  Siuming Lo,et al.  Discrete Element Crowd Model for Pedestrian Evacuation Through an Exit , 2015 .

[21]  Tong Ran,et al.  Required width of exit to avoid the faster-is-slower effect in highly competitive evacuation , 2017 .

[22]  S. Dai,et al.  Centrifugal force model for pedestrian dynamics. , 2005, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.