Experimental study on pedestrian walking characteristics through angled corridors

Major public infrastructures are increasingly visited by masses of people, not only during special events but also for daily activities. It is extremely important to ensure the safety of these crowds in case of an emergency and to guarantee efficient and bottleneck-free movements in day-to-day situations. A proper understanding of crowd dynamics is vital in order to achieve safety and efficiency at mass gathering places. Building designers and crowd managers have to rely on microscopic and macroscopic pedestrian crowd simulation models, most of the times, to assess the designs or manage crowds, particularly at public buildings. Further, these models are helpful in identifying problematic places or dangerous spots and to assess and suggest design solutions for crowd gathering places. However, in order to calibrate and validate these explanatory models for complex pedestrian movements, such as turning movements, and to gain more insights in to pedestrian behaviours, detailed empirical data are required. A series of experiments with a group of pedestrians were conducted recently at Monash University to understand the microscopic walking characteristics of individuals walking through angled corridors. Initial results suggest that, angles of more than 90° can significantly decrease the free flow walking speeds of individuals. This threshold angle can be reduced up to 60° when pedestrians' desired speed is high.