Pedestrian dynamics
The pedestrians can be included in the category of the subjectactivea special case of granular media in which the particles are self-propelled. Obviously, only some aspects of human behaviour can be explained by this paradigm. In this line of researchwe try to better understand the bottleneck of a flow of people exiting a doorway. In a panic status, the results can be fatal. It is possible that some strategies specifically designed to alleviate clogging in inert grains may be useful in the case of individuals.
To this end, we carried out several series of experiments. One of them was carried out with a flock of sheep on a farm in Cubel (Zaragoza). The farmer, T. Yagüe, turned on the camera that we fixed on the door of his stable every morning when the sheep came in to eat. The analysis of the passage of the sheep through the door allowed us to establish many similarities with the granular media. Subsequently, we carried out evacuation drills with students from School of Architectureof the University of Navarra, and with soldiers from the America 66 regiment (Aizoáin, Navarra). The study of exit times, speed and pressure should help us to better understand the process and perhaps find ways to reduce the likelihood of a door jam.
For more information, please visit
- Pedestrian collective motion in competitive room evacuation
- Effect of obstacle position in the flow of sheep through a narow door (.pdf)
- Flow of pedestrians through narrow doors with different competitiveness (.pdf)
- The universality of traffic jams
- Flow and clogging of a sheep herd passing through a bottleneck (.pdf)
- Clogging transition of many-particle systems flowing through bottlenecks
- Experimental evidence of the 'Faster Is Slower' effect (.pdf)
- Youtube videos (from the Granular Lab channel)