Propagation characteristics of the pedestrian shockwave in dense crowd: Experiment and simulation

Crowd shockwave is a very common phenomenon in dense crowd, which is likely to cause crowd destabilization and stampede accidents. Several researches on crowd shockwave have been reported, but its explicit concept and particular mechanism need to be further investigated. In the paper, the main causes and the definition of crowd shockwave were proposed based on experimental observation and existing accident information. Combined with the experiment scenario, a crowd shockwave simulation model was established based on the social force theory. In order to understand the transmission mechanism of crowd shockwave, the amplitude that is indicated by the maximum density, the propagation speed and the duration of the crowd shockwave were acquired and analyzed based on the density waves from the simulation. Meanwhile, the simulation results were verified by the experiment. The outcomes can offer a few relevant control strategies to eliminate or reduce the crowd shockwave, thereby prevent trampling accidents.