An experimental study on four-directional intersecting pedestrian flows

Abstract

Intersecting pedestrian flows especially multi-directional ones are complicated in dynamics. People will face unavoidable head-on conflicts and obstruct each other. In this paper, controlled experiments of a four-directional intersecting pedestrian flow were conducted. Up to 364 university students took part in the experiments and their trajectories were extracted by a mean-shift algorithm. The global density-velocity relations in the cross area in different scenarios are compared. Moreover, local density-velocity and local density-flow relations in the cross area are investigated. In order to adapt the study of a fundamental diagram for four directional intersecting flows, a new coordinate system based on pedestrian motion is built. The results indicate that the coordinate system is suitable for the analysis of multi-directional flows. The local density-velocity relation seems consistent with previous results obtained from an actual high-density pedestrian flow. At high densities, the average local velocity in the cross area is a bit larger than a previous study. The reason may be due to the density difference between the cross area and the corridors, which can be observed in real life.

The fundamental diagrams of elderly pedestrian flow in straight corridors under different densities

“…Research on the pedestrian dynamics is the key to realize safer transportation environments and effective evacuation in emergencies. Pedestrian experiments under well controlled but various conditions were carried out to study the movement of pedestrians [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The current research indicates that the building structure, the motivation of the crowd and the data collection methods have obvious influences on the fundamental diagram of the pedestrian movement [8][9][10].…”

Experimental Study of Oblique Pedestrian Streams

“…Early research focused on the phenomenon of stripe formation by self-organization in intersection areas with simulation which described a distribution status of the same direction pedestrians [2][3][4][5]. In recent years, a few intersecting pedestrian stream models had been established to describe the state of motion [6][7][8][9] and analysed speed variation before and after pedestrian intersecting [9][10][11][12].…”

Single-file pedestrian flow experiments under high-density conditions

“…The results show that the strength and range of anticipation significantly affect pedestrian dynamics, and there is one optimal strength of anticipation to realize the smoothest bi-directional flow. Lian et al (2015) performed an experimental study on four-directional intersecting pedestrian flows. The test track is two corridors which intersect vertically.…”