The fundamental diagrams of elderly pedestrian flow in straight corridors under different densities

Problem & Motivation

The movement characteristic lacks experimental study and data proof. We conducted controlled experiments of elderly pedestrians passing through the straight corridor. The density range of 0.2 to 3 m^-2 are realized by changing the width of the inlet and outlet. Then, comparative analysis between the old Chinese and the young Germen under the same experimental setup was carried out to study the movement difference between these two groups.

Methods

We focus on the difference between the fundamental diagram of the elderly and the young. It can be found that the elders have lower speed and specific flow than the young under the same density. We succeeded to normalize the fundamental diagrams by using the mean velocities in low density regime (lower than 0.7 m^-2). It is shown that the differences are mostly related to the different free velocities of the two groups. In addition, the elderly group have digger d_pw (distance between the participants and the walls) and smaller d_pp (distances between the participants) than the young group.

Related Publication

Ren, X., Zhang, J., Song, W., & Cao, S. (2019). The fundamental diagrams of elderly pedestrian flow in straight corridors under different densities. Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2019(2), 023403.

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