Analysis of the pedestrian arching at bottleneck based on a bypassing behavior model

• Velocity–time domain was constructed for modeling behavior decision.
• Bypassing strategy of pedestrian behavior was modeled in the velocity–time domain.
• The expectation time of the pedestrian arching at the bottleneck is depending on the width of the exit exponentially.

A bypassing behavior model was proposed, in which the local optimal decision behavior in the strategy level was modeled in velocity–time domain, to describe how pedestrians bypass the local obstacles considering the relative speed.The model contains (1) pedestrian visual and contact information acquisition; (2) motion state prediction of the local obstacles based on the visual and contact information; (3) pedestrian bypass strategy modeling in the velocity–time domain; (4) moving and overlapping solution. In the numerical solution, velocity domain was divided into nn equal angle, the value of nn ranges from 2 to infinity, the Manhattan space was refined gradually to Euclid Space accordingly, in which the movement of pedestrians was described.The model was applied to the analysis of pedestrian arching at the bottleneck in the emergent evacuation situation. (1) The results showed that the formation of the pedestrian arching at the bottleneck was deformation pressure, because many pedestrians try to pass through the bottleneck simultaneously, even in the absence of friction, the pedestrian arching still occurs; (2) In the emergent situation, we are more concerned about the bottleneck attribution of resistance to form the arching, the calculation and simulation results showed that the probability of an arching and the bottleneck width is an exponential function relationship, so when the stampede occurs in the middle of the bottleneck, the probability of arching will increase exponentially.