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Investigating the impact of exit availability on egress time using computer based evacuation simulation

Investigating the impact of exit availability on egress time using computer based evacuation simulation

Galea, Edwin R. ORCID: 0000-0002-0001-6665, Togher, Madeleine and Lawrence, Peter ORCID: 0000-0002-0269-0231 (2007) Investigating the impact of exit availability on egress time using computer based evacuation simulation. Proceedings of the 5th Triennial International Fire and Cabin Safety Research Conference, Atlantic City, 29 Oct.-1 Nov. 2007. Federal Aviation Administration, Washington DC.

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Abstract

This paper examines the influence of exit availability on evacuation time for a narrow
body aircraft under certification trial conditions using computer simulation. A narrow
body aircraft which has previously passed the certification trial is used as the test
configuration. While maintaining the certification requirement of 50% of the
available exits, six different exit configurations are examined. These include the
standard certification configuration (one exit from each exit pair) and five other exit
configurations based on commonly occurring exit combinations found in accidents.
These configurations are based on data derived from the AASK database and the
evacuation simulations are performed using the airEXODUS evacuation simulation
software. The results show that the certification practice of using half the available
exits predominately down one side of the aircraft is neither statistically relevant nor
challenging. For the aircraft cabin layout examined, the exit configuration used in
certification trial produces the shortest egress times. Furthermore, three of the six exit
combinations investigated result in predicted egress times in excess of 90 seconds,
suggesting that the aircraft would not satisfy the certification requirement under these
conditions.

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: This paper forms part of the published proceedings of The 5th Triennial International Aircraft Fire and Cabin Safety Research Conference October 29-November 1, 2007, Atlantic City, New Jersey, [2] This paper also forms part of the proceedings of the 4th international conference on "Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics", held 27-29 February 2008 at Wuppertal University, Wuppertal, Germany. See record 1806 in the repository
Uncontrolled Keywords: exit availability, evacuation times, egress times, narrow body aircraft, computer simulation, exit configurations, AASK database, airEXODUS, evacuation simulation, certification requirements
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
T Technology > TL Motor vehicles. Aeronautics. Astronautics
Pre-2014 Departments: School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Centre for Numerical Modelling & Process Analysis > Fire Safety Engineering Group
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2019 15:06
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/1191

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