Friction effects and clogging in a cellular automaton model for pedestrian dynamics

摘要

We investigate the role of conflicts in pedestrian traffic, i.e. situationswhere two or more people try to enter the same space. Therefore a recentlyintroduced cellular automaton model for pedestrian dynamics is extended by afriction parameter $\mu$. This parameter controls the probability that themovement of all particles involved in a conflict is denied at one time step. Itis shown that these conflicts are not an undesirable artefact of the parallelupdate scheme, but are important for a correct description of the dynamics. Thefriction parameter $\mu$ can be interpreted as a kind of internal localpressure between the pedestrians which becomes important in regions of highdensity, ocurring e.g. in panic situations. We present simulations of theevacuation of a large room with one door. It is found that friction has notonly quantitative effects, but can also lead to qualitative changes, e.g. ofthe dependence of the evacuation time on the system parameters. We also observesimilarities to the flow of granular materials, e.g. arching effects.