美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——1999 B O Determining the People Capacity of a Structur【数学建模】.pdfVIP

Determining the People Capacity of a Structure 273 Determining the People Capacity of a Structure Samuel W. Malone W. Garrett Mitchener John Alexander Thacker Duke University Durham, NC Advisor: David P. Kraines Summary Many public facilities are assigned a “maximum legal occupancy” for how many people may be in the facility at one time. For typical facilities, we consider personal space, evacuation time, and ventilation to determine this number. We present several models of evacuation and flow of people to determine how quickly a given number of people can leave a room or complex of rooms in case of an emergency. We estimate the time for a room to become dangerous when toxins are leaking into the atmosphere, including the carbon dioxide produced by human respiration and by fire. In addition to an emergency situation, we investigate how the ventilation through a room might limit its maximum occupancy. We expect each person to need 0.5 to 1 m of personal space. For an elevator or a concert, in which close contact is not considered uncomfortable, smaller values may be used. For a swimming pool, where people need more room to maneuver, we recommend more. We use three models of flow of people out of a room with a door. One assumes that the flow rate is constant, the second bounds it by a linear function of people-density (people per unit area) in the room, and the third bounds it by a concave-down quadratic function of people-density. In each case, the rate at which people exit is roughly proportional to the combined flow rates of all the doors. A room with a lot of small furniture is similar to an empty room, since people are not heavily restricted in direction of travel; but a room with large furniture that restricts motion is better considered as a complex of connected rooms. The space taken up by furniture must be subtracted from the who