Experimental study on evacuation process in a stairwell of a high-rise building

One of the most important emergency accesses in a multi-layer or high-rise building is stairwell, through which people can escape from the building in case of fire. Much attention has been paid to evacuation study in the stairwell by means of experiments or modeling. In this study, an evacuation experiment was conducted in a stairwell of an 8-layer high-rise building. The evacuation process in the stairwell was recorded by video cameras. Some typical movement characteristics and parameters were extracted based on the recording data. The results demonstrate that the downward velocity is determined by three aspects: merging behavior in the entrance buffer of the stairwell, strength of participants and visibility in the stairwell. The downward velocity measured in our experiment, about 0.81 m/s, is similar to that in the previous study. The relationship between velocity and density in our study agrees well with the function indicated in SFPE handbook.

► The mean downward velocity of Chinese pedestrians is 0.81 m/s
► The results imply that the overall velocity is dominated by velocity on stair.
► The downward velocity is affected by merging, physical strength and visibility.
► The results may be useful for fire risk assessment and design of high-rise buildings.