362 – Contributed Poster Presentations: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
The Effects of Compression Forces on the Crowd Dynamics
Guillermo A. Frank
Universidad Tecnologica Nacional
The collective dynamics of pedestrians display complex phenomena involving slowings down due to clogging, and even, turbulent patterns. Casualties may occur, although these can be (partially) anticipated by performing computer simulations. The Social Force Model (SFM) has been shown to be suitable for describing the crowd behavior. In its present version, the parameters of the model are not well determined experimentally. So, in order to perform more realistic simulations some of these parameters should be critically reviewed. In this communication we specifically investigated the effects of the stiffness parameter (which describes the compressibility of the pedestrian's body) on the crowd dynamics. We analyzed the corresponding simulations for the evacuation of corridors and bottlenecks. Our main conclusion is that mutual coordination between the individual's stiffness and the geometrical configuration is required for attaining an enhanced evacuation efficiency.