Experimen Tal Study On The Effect Of Background Music On Single-file Pedestrian Flow

With the development of urbanization,more people live in the cities.It increases the effectiveness and potentiality of the city development.However,it will also contribute to the crowdedness in the public places.The standard of living has been improved,therefore more people go to travel in the holidays.There are a lot of tourists in the scenic spots.The crowd controlling and management is a key issue for the health development of the cities and the tourism.Music may be a potential method to improve pedestrian flow.However,the researches about improving pedestrian flow with music is few.It is necessary to study the effect of music on pedestrian movement in more detail.Therefore,in this paper,a series of single-file experiments we re carried out to investigate the influence of the background music on pedestrian movement and reveal the reason for itFirstly,the stepping behavior without any rhythm was investigated.According to the charac teristics of stepping,step sample s we re extracted from the trajectories of the pedestrians.It is found that the step length and step frequency decrease by 75%and 33%when the global density increases from 0.46 ped/m(1D density)to 2.28 ped/m,respectively.With the increment of the headway,the step length and step frequency will increase firstly,then they will be steady when the headway is beyond 1.16 m and 0.91 m,respectively.The distributions of the step length and step frequency at different headways can be described with the normal distributions.Meanwhile,there is a rule in the relations of step length and frequency at different headways.The step frequency decreases with the increment of step length,and the decreasing speed depends on the headway.When the headway is between 0.6 m and 1.0 m,the decreasing speed of the step frequency will increase with the increment of the step length.When the headway is below 0.6 m or beyond 1.0 m,the decreasing speed will decrease with the increasing of the step le ngth.Then,a series of single-file experiment were carried out to study the influence of background music on pedestrian movement.Two different types(the music of a song and metronome stimuli)and three different music tempos(90 beat/min(BPM),120 BPM and 150 BPM)were included.When the global density is 1.82 ped/m,stop-and-go behavior starts to emerge apparently both with and without any rhythm.However,it is more frequent under background music conditions.The stopped pedestrian per time with 90 BPM,120 BPM and 150 BPM music and with 90 BPM,120 BPM and 150 BPM metronome are 68.57%,376.00%,298.29%,224.00%,438.29%and 393.71%more than that without any rhythm,respectively.The average stopping durations with rhythms(1.40 s,2.77 s,2.59 s,1.99 s,3.17 s and 3.36 s)are longer than that without any rhythm(1.14 s).When the music types are same,the stopped pedestrian per time with high tempo(120 BPM and 150 BPM)rhythm is more than that with low tempo rhythm(90 BPM).The average stopping durations with high tempo(120 BPM and 150 BPM)are longer than that with tow tempo(90 BPM)rhythm.When the tempos are same,the stopped pedestrian per time with metronome is more than that with music.The average stopping duration with metronome is tonger than that with music.With and without any rhythm,the"phase coexistence”comes out.However,it emerges at a lower local density(1.7 ped/m)with rhythms(except for 90 BPM music).Compared with that under no background music condition,the velocity and flow are lower at high densities under background music conditions.The step freque ncy with rhythms is lower at high density.By investigating the stopping behavior with 120 BPM background music and without any rhythm,we revealed the reason for the influence of background music on pedestrian movement.Based on the video recordings of the experiment and the time-space diagrams along the corridor(X)and that vertical to the corridor(Y),the macroscopic characteristics of X-T and Y-T were analyzed.Based on the rules in the characteristics of the time-space diagram,the stopped interval is defined.According to the definition of the stopped interval,we define the stopping reaction time and removing reaction time.There is not any significant difference between the stopping reaction time with rhythm(1.12 s±0.85 s)and that witho ut any rhythm(0.98 s±0.56 s).The removing reaction time with rhythm(1.10 s ± 0.80 s)is longer than that without any rhythm(0.48 s± 0.28 s).The increasing of the removing reaction time contributes to more headway fluctuations and the higher ratio of velocity below 0.1 m/s.The headway oscillation ratio and velocity oscillation ratio of pedestrian flow are analyzed.We find that the difference between the velocity oscillation with rhythm and without any rhythm is low when the density is below 0.91 ped/m.The velocity oscillation ratio with rhythm is apparent higher than that witho ut any rhythm when the density is beyond 0.91 ped/m.Meanwhile,there is a relation between the velocity oscillation ratio and the stopped pedestrian ratio.Stopping behavior e merges when the velocity oscillation ratio is not less than 0.49.Therefore,with rhythm,the removing reaction time increases at high density,which leads to the increment of the headway oscillation ratio.The velocity oscillation ratio increases with the increasing of the headway oscillation.The velocity oscillation ratio with rhythm is higher than that without any rhythm When the velocity oscillation is more than 0.49,the stopped pedestrian ratio will increase with the velocity oscillation ratio linearly.Therefore,the stopping behavior is more frequent with rhythm,which contributes to the lower velocity and flow at high densities.