Simulation And Experiment Study On Occupant Behavior Characteristics Of Evacuation

With the advancement of urbanization, all kinds of large-scale integrated buildingswith complex style are emerging contantly. And combined with the concentration ofpopulation, it will cause a lot of casualties in the event of fire, earthquakes and othersudden accident. Therefore, study all kinds of building with the emergency evacuationproblems are attached important attention by researchers around the world. Field survey,computer simulation and evacuation experiment are commomly used to make a study.The methods of questionnaire, Pathfinder simulation and experiment with unit roomwere comprehensive used. Three aspects of exit choice, exit with obstruction and buildingplane forms were choosed to discuss the occupant evacuation behavior.Firstly, a questionnaire was designed and made in view of the awareness of fireknowlage and evacuation behavior cognition. The effect of occupants’ basic features, suchas gender and fire experience, on evacuation behavior choice was analyzed emphatically.Secondly, an experiment of unit room with double exits was designed. The on-offstate of one exit on intial time was changed after5s. And different exit widths weresimulated to discuss the choice behavior of occupants. The results showed that it waspresenting a crowed state when just one eixt was opened, and then most occupants chose tochange their evacuation path when another exit was opened. Most occupants would choosethe relaxed distance exit but not near at hand. It is the same with survey that80%peoplechoose other faster exits for evacuation. Increase thewidth of two exits at the same time,the total evacuation time was lower obviously than one exit only when the occupantdensity was same. But the effects no longer have obviously improved when exits increasedto a certain value.Then, effect of the exisiten of obstacles and distance away from the exit on evacuationand ocupants behavior choice. It was found in experiment and simulation that a crowded“bottleneck” was come into being when the room has one exit without obstacles. Theexistence of obstacles made occupant detour to avoid crashing into it. And it wills relief thecrowded “bottleneck”, increasing the evacuation efficiency. At the same time, a hollowcircle with certain radius which centered on obatacle was formed. So, take advantage of thehollow area reasonably can be more effective to decrese the evacuation time and increasethe efficiency. In addition, the distance of obstacle from exit has a great impact onevacuation time. Through the analysis of experiment and simulation, it all showed that it was more conductive to evacuation when obstacle was put1.0m from exit than no obstacleand has the shortest total evacuation time.Finally, on the basis of the experimental unit room, there unit rooms of differentarchitectural plane forms were used as the reseach about the effect of the change of exitwidth on occupant evacuation. Some conclutions were obtained that in favour of buildingplane desige choice considering the occupant evacuation synthetically.