美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——1999 B O Hexagonal Unpacking【数学建模】.pdfVIP

Hexagonal Unpacking 287 Hexagonal Unpacking David Rudel Joshua Greene Cameron McLeman Harvey Mudd College Claremont, CA 91711 Advisor: Ran Libeskind-Hadas Abstract We present a model for movement within crowded structures, tessellating a room with hexagons and using a waiting-time function based on the harmonic mean of closest neighbors. We determine the maximum time required for all persons to exit, comparing this time to a target time based on the size of the structure. Our model is very general and its parameters can be modified for several types of buildings. We consider various specific cases, giving the maximum occupancy for each. Assumptions When several people jockey for a vacated position, the probability that one of them occupies it is independent of how long each has spent in his current location. A person who has been waiting longer would seem to have an easier time, but this effect is compensated by the tendency, even in groups of people gathered around an exit, to move in lines. The forward momentum of moving into a new position gives an extra advantage, as the person may well be drafting behind someone else, forming a miniature line weaving through the crowd. Whichever advantage prevails, we posit that it is small enough to ignore. People exiting a building generally move so as to decrease their overall expected exit time. Years of selecting optimum shopping lines and struggling to get out of crowded theaters, along with a human’s natural ability to see where holes are forming in the crowd, constitute a natural tendency to select paths that minimize the time to exit. Even if humans can’t see instantly what course c The UMAP Journal 20 (3) (1999) 287–296. Copyright 1999 by COMAP, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or