Modeling domino effect along the queue using an improved social force model.

Previous investigations have indicated that the cascading effect or domino effect, caused by microscopic interactions and collisions between pedestrians, is the true reason for crowd turbulence and can lead to crowd disasters. In this paper, a modified social force model considering the collision dynamics was proposed to model the domino effect of physical interactions along the queue, as well as the macroscopic dynamics of crowded pedestrians in the periodic boundary corridor Compared to the original social force model, the results of the modified model, such as the accumulation of the maximum momentums and contact forces via the transmission of collisions, show more consistency with previous empirical data. Moreover, we discussed the influence of several basic factors on the domino effect within and beyond experimental scale, such as pedestrian distance, initial impulse, and queue size. Further verification was given by comparing the transmission pattern with other experiments. Finally, the modified model proves its effectiveness and benefits in modeling high-density crowds by comparing with the empirical data in Hajj. This work provided a new insight to reproduce the domino effect, and could be extended to large-scale simulation to reproduce the velocity–density fundamental diagrams. • A modified social force model was proposed to model the domino effect of physical interactions. • The simulated momentums and contact forces are consistent with previous experimental data. • The transmission pattern of the collision was statistically fitted by an exponential relation. • The fundamental diagram is aligned with the Hajj empirical data in the high-density region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]