Using A*star to study flow through doors

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pc neo asked Oct 8, '18 pc neo commented Nov 12, '18

Using A*star to study flow through doors

I've a request to simulate flow through different opening size of doors. The attached model is my preliminary idea, that is to have numerous adults and children walking through a opening in divider heading to different destinations.

astar-people-flow.fsm

My observation:
a) Though the opening size is big enough for more than 2 or 3 adults to go through, all the people traveling only concentrates at 2 edges of the opening.

dooropening.png

b) As there adults and children in the model, therefore I have set the node size of the A*star to cater to the children (smaller nodes). I notice that there are crashing of adults and children in congested area, refer to 'red box' in crashing.png.

crashing.png

Is there something that I could have done differently? Any advice is appreciated.

Software Version:

FlexSim 18.2.2

Software Version:

FlexSim 18.1.2

astar astar navigator people flow

dooropening.png (210.6 KiB)

crashing.png (507.3 KiB)

astar-people-flow.fsm (51.0 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2018-10-10T17:29:44Z

tannerp answered Oct 10, '18 pc neo commented Nov 12, '18

This is a unique modeling experiment that I haven't ever thought of before. I can't tell you whether or not you've done it correctly, because I don't know what you're modeling in real life. Maybe there are alternative ways of doing this besides relying on the 3D model.

One example would be to designate a "size" label for adults and children. The "size" could represent width, height, weight, etc. and would be variable within a realistic limit. Say adults are sizes 80-100 and children are sizes 40-75.

With these "size" variables, you could then have a decision point that will allow a set combined size through in a batch. Say the doorway can allow in a batch size of 250 combined. In this example, if multiple objects are waiting to go through a doorway with sizes 80, 40, 100, and 75, the decision point will take the 80, 40, and 100 (total of 220), but will not allow the 75 to go in that batch (295 > 250).

Just an idea. I am really not sure what you're going for here. Let us know if you have specific questions about your model.

· 2

pc neo commented · Oct 22, 2018 at 09:37 AM

thank you, I think this approach should work for this requirement. :)

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tannerp pc neo commented · Oct 22, 2018 at 03:48 PM

Great! Let us know how it goes. If you are able to create something useful, you could consider sharing your model with the community by uploading it to this post to help other FlexSimmers.

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