On the Influence of Columns in Densely Populated Corridors

An experimental and computational campaign was undertaken to measure the influence of columns in densely populated corridors. undertaken. A instrumented corridor of 5x12.54 m with two columns was enclosed by walls, and several hundred people were asked to walk repeatedly through the enclosed region. The maximum density achieved was of the order of 6 people/sqm, higher than what is deemed safe for many operating standards. The experiments were run with and without columns to see their influence. Remarkably, even at high densities, the columns had no noticeable influence on the pedestrian motion. Furthermore, the forces measured on the columns were very small (noise-level).