An Evacuation Time Correction Method for Passenger Ships Fire Considering Passenger Panic

Abstract

To investigate the effects of panic and age composition on the evacuation efficiency of passenger ships, this study proposes an evacuation simulation method in the case of crowd panic and an evacuation time correction method based on an improved social force model. The innovation of this study is to propose an evacuation time correction model considering passenger panic and congestion, and to verify its effectiveness through simulation examples. Firstly, this study analyzes the three factors that affect passenger evacuation, including passenger panic, panic contagion and ship heeling. Secondly, the generalized entropy function is introduced to quantify passengers’ panic and combined with the influence of ship heeling to improve the social force model. Thirdly, this study uses traffic flow theory to study the crowding of passengers entering stairs. After that, based on the emergency evacuation path of the passenger ship, a correction model for the evacuation time of the passenger ship was established. Finally, the validity of the introduced evacuation time correction model is verified through case analysis and simulation. The results show that: in this case, the theoretical evacuation time of passengers to the safe area is 1010 s, and the simulated evacuation time is 1087 s, both of which meet the evacuation time requirements of MSC.1/Circ.1533. The application value of the above research is further verified.

Keywords

• Fire evacuation
• panic emotions
• passenger ship
• temporal model
• social force model