Evacuation efficiency and survival rate of bent-over walking during horizontal cabin fire evacuation

Bent-over walking is a common and neglected fire evacuation behavior. To provide bent-over walking data for evacuation research, bent-over walking speed under different deck environment was obtained through experiments. In addition, to compare the differences of walking, bent-over walking and crawling in cabin fire evacuation, we used numerical simulations to test the impacts of fire location, distribution of persons at day and night, personnel evacuation to the nearest point, and directional movement on evacuation efficiency. Fire and personnel evacuation were simulated using the Fire Dynamics Simulator model. The numerical simulation results confirm that bent-over walking has a higher evacuation efficiency and survival rate as compared with walking and crawling. In addition, by comparing experimental data with the numerical simulation results, we identified a critical impact of the interaction between personnel evacuation behaviour and fire environmental factors on evacuation efficiency and mortality rate. The speed data of different evacuation behaviors obtained by the experiment is a very important factor in the study of ship evacuation, and the simulation results will provide guidance for ship fire evacuation procedures.