Research On The Key Influencing Factors Of Personal Evacuation On Passenger Vessels

The safety of passengers aboard passenger vessels is the top priority of maritime transport,and is also an important part of social public safety.The safety guarantee technologies of large passenger vessels,especially the research on personal evacuation of Ro-Ro passenger vessels,have become the forefront of research attracting close attention of academia and maritime industry in recent years.Personnel evacuation in passenger vessels has some distinctive features,such as unique evacuation mode,low familiarity of environment,complex and diverse personnel behaviours,and adverse effects of ship motion.However,as the study in this area started comparatively late and lack of data,few existing research on passenger ship evacuation have analysed the influencing factors,such as safety awareness,perception of wayfinding tools,likely evacuation behaviour and ship roll motion on the evacuation process.In the above context,this study takes the personal evacuation analysis of large passenger vessels as the research object,and mainly focus on the safety awareness of evacuees,wayfinding behaviour,and the walking speed of evacuees under ship rolling motion.A personal evacuation evaluation model of passenger vessels is established,the impact of the above-mentioned key influencing factors on the evacuation efficiency of passenger vessels is analysed,and the safety technologies and management strategies for personal evacuation passenger vessels are put forward pertinently.(1)Research on the safety awareness,perception of wayfinding tools and the evacuation behaviour of evacuees.By conducting practical surveys on a Ro-Ro passenger vessel in operation,the demographic characteristics of passengers on a ship’s route,such as gender,age group,education level,and experience on board were collected.The emergency evacuation safety awareness,perception of wayfinding tools and evacuation procedures,and likely evacuation behaviours of passengers on passenger vessels were studied.Based on Wilcoxon single sample test and multiple comparative analysis,the above items were analysed to reveal the status quo of safety awareness,pathfinding perception mechanism and behaviour choice tendency of passengers in emergency evacuation process.Demographic characteristics were taken as independent variables,safety awareness and perception of wayfinding tools and evacuation behaviors as dependent variables,a series of ordered logistic regression model was established.The research results showed that there were demographic differences in the safety awareness,perception of wayfinding tools and likely evacuation behaviours.(2)Experimental study on the walking speed of evacuees under different ship roll amplitudes.A series of human walking experiments were carried out on-board a real ship to collect the walking speed data of personal in the corridor area and the staircase area under different ship roll angular magnitudes.The influence of different ship roll angular magnitudes on an individual’s walking speed was studied to reveal the attenuation law of individuals’ walking speeds under different ship roll angular magnitudes,and the reduction ratio of human walking speed was obtained.The analysis results showed that due to the influence of the ship’s rolling motion,the farther the distance from the rolling center is,the more the personnel be affected by the ship’s rolling motion.Through the analysis of the attenuation ratio of an individual’s walking speed,it can be seen that the impact of ship motion on walking speed was greater than that of static heeling.The influence of the staircases on normal walking was greater than that on fast walking,and the influence on walking up and down the staircases was not significant.(3)Numerical analysis of the influence of different influencing factors on the evacuation efficiency of passenger vessels.An evacuation model of Ro-Ro passenger vessels was established based on FDS+EVAC to study the influence of population composition parameters,ship familiarity,and ship rolling motion on the evacuation time and evacuation efficiency.The results of numerical analysis showed that the influence of different population composition on evacuation results was significantly different,with a difference of about 12%;a moderate degree of familiarity was the most beneficial strategy to promote the evacuation process,and the issue of exit balance should be considered in a balanced manner;as the ship roll angular magnitude increased,the evacuation time of personnel increased gradually,and the overall evacuation efficiency decreased gradually.Based on the analysis results of personal evacuation efficiency of passenger vessels,strategies and suggestions were put forward to improve the accuracy of evacuation analysis and evacuation efficiency.(4)Passenger vessel geometric layout optimisation method based on simulation analysis of personnel evacuation.Based on the established personal evacuation evaluation model,combined with the existing geometrical space conditions of passenger vessels,a passenger ship operating in the Bohai Strait was taken as an example,a method was provided to identify the congestion points of the existing ship geometry layout,and try to optimise the ship stair layout.The analysis results of the influence of different staircase layouts on the evacuation results showed that adding a staircase at the bow of the ship can reduce the average time for 95% of the passengers to complete the evacuation by 13.6%,and adding a staircase at the stern can reduce such time by 10%.By adjusting the size of the main staircase,it was found that adjusting the size of the middle stair alone has little effect on the overall evacuation result,and adding an interval handrail on the main staircase can effectively disperse the flow of evacuation and enhanced the efficiency of evacuation at the main stairs,and ease congestion phenomenon.This study is a systematic result of personal evacuation analysis of passenger vessels,which is of great significance to better understanding of the status quo of safety awareness of evacuees during passenger vessel evacuation,the availability of emergency wayfinding tools,and different evacuation behaviours of evacuees,and developing and verifying evacuation model or evacuation sign system in passenger vessel environment.In addition,the research results can also provide reliable experimental data for the simulation and analysis of personal evacuation of passenger vessels,which can be used to identify congestion points in the geometric layout of existing ships,optimise the layout of passenger vessels,and evaluate personal evacuation plans and crowd management strategies,and further improve the safety level of coastal Ro-Ro passenger vessels in China.