TY - JOUR
T1 - Macroscopic pedestrian flow simulation using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH)
AU - Yuan, Yufei
AU - Goni Ros, Bernat
AU - Bui, Ha H.
AU - Daamen, Winnie
AU - Vu, Hai L.
AU - Hoogendoorn, Serge
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Macroscopic pedestrian models are theoretically simpler than microscopic models, and they can potentially be solved faster while producing reasonable predictions of crowd dynamics. Therefore, they can be very useful for applications such as large-scale simulation, real-time state estimation and crowd management. However, the numerical methods presently used to solve macroscopic pedestrian models, which are mostly grid-based, have some shortcomings that limit their applicability. More specifically, they usually include complex procedures for grid generation and remeshing, and they produce simulation results that may not be sufficiently accurate (for example, because of unclear boundaries between flow states). Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) constitutes an alternative numerical method that could potentially overcome these limitations. SPH is a meshfree method where a crowd is represented by a set of particles that possess material properties and move according to macroscopic laws. Relevant state variables at each particle are approximated using information about the material properties of the neighboring particles and a smoothing function. This paper puts forward for the first time a generic SPH framework for solving macroscopic pedestrian models; in addition, it demonstrates that an SPH-based simulation model can produce meaningful and accurate results by means of three case studies. The first case study shows that the proposed numerical method can approximate well the analytical solution of a simple macroscopic model applied to a queue-discharge scenario. The second case study demonstrates that the proposed numerical method can potentially reproduce density dispersion (a phenomenon observed in real crowds) more accurately than grid-based methods, due to its meshfree, Lagrangian, and particle-based nature. The third case study highlights the need to reformulate the acceleration equation of the basic macroscopic model in order to reproduce lane formation in bi-directional flows (also an observed phenomenon) using the proposed SPH framework, and this paper presents a solution to do so.
AB - Macroscopic pedestrian models are theoretically simpler than microscopic models, and they can potentially be solved faster while producing reasonable predictions of crowd dynamics. Therefore, they can be very useful for applications such as large-scale simulation, real-time state estimation and crowd management. However, the numerical methods presently used to solve macroscopic pedestrian models, which are mostly grid-based, have some shortcomings that limit their applicability. More specifically, they usually include complex procedures for grid generation and remeshing, and they produce simulation results that may not be sufficiently accurate (for example, because of unclear boundaries between flow states). Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) constitutes an alternative numerical method that could potentially overcome these limitations. SPH is a meshfree method where a crowd is represented by a set of particles that possess material properties and move according to macroscopic laws. Relevant state variables at each particle are approximated using information about the material properties of the neighboring particles and a smoothing function. This paper puts forward for the first time a generic SPH framework for solving macroscopic pedestrian models; in addition, it demonstrates that an SPH-based simulation model can produce meaningful and accurate results by means of three case studies. The first case study shows that the proposed numerical method can approximate well the analytical solution of a simple macroscopic model applied to a queue-discharge scenario. The second case study demonstrates that the proposed numerical method can potentially reproduce density dispersion (a phenomenon observed in real crowds) more accurately than grid-based methods, due to its meshfree, Lagrangian, and particle-based nature. The third case study highlights the need to reformulate the acceleration equation of the basic macroscopic model in order to reproduce lane formation in bi-directional flows (also an observed phenomenon) using the proposed SPH framework, and this paper presents a solution to do so.
KW - Macroscopic pedestrian model
KW - Meshfree numerical method
KW - Self-organization
KW - Smoothed particle hydrodynamics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85077440896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.trc.2019.12.017
DO - 10.1016/j.trc.2019.12.017
M3 - Article
SN - 0968-090X
VL - 111
SP - 334
EP - 351
JO - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
JF - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
ER -