Transitions in pedestrian fundamental diagrams of straight corridors and T-junctions

TL;DR

This study improves empirical understanding of pedestrian flow by comparing measurement methods and analyzing fundamental diagrams in corridors and T-junctions, revealing boundary effects and phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a refined measurement approach using the Voronoi method and provides new empirical data on pedestrian dynamics in different corridor geometries.

Findings

Voronoi method captures fine-structure of fundamental diagrams

Boundary-induced phase transition observed in pedestrian flow

Discrepancies identified between T-junction and straight corridor diagrams

Abstract

Many observations of pedestrian dynamics, including various self-organization phenomena, have been reproduced successfully by different models. But the empirical databases for quantitative calibration are still insufficient, e.g. the fundamental diagram as one of the most important relationships displays non-negligible differences among various studies. To improve this situation, experiments in straight corridors and T-junction are performed. Four different measurement methods are defined to study their effects on the fundamental diagram. It is shown that they have minor influences for {\rho} <3.5 m-2 but only the Voronoi method is able to resolve the fine-structure of the fundamental diagram. This enhanced measurement method permits to observe the occurrence of boundary-induced phase transition. For corridors of different widths we found that the specific flow concept works well for {\rho} <3.5 m-2. Moreover, we illustrate the discrepancies between the fundamental diagrams of a T-junction and a straight corridor.