On the Dimension of an Emergency Exit : 1st.Report

Abstract

In spite of many disasters at sea, little attention has been turned to designing the escaping equipments in ships such as gateway, passage and stairway. With a view to set a criterion on designing such equipments the authors studied, as a first step, experimentally the movement of the crowds that flee in great confusion through emergency exits of various dimensions. As the result of experiments, the following relation has been brought to light: T=tB-2・15 where T is the time taken to pass a exit in question, B the width of the exit in metre and t the time taken to pass the exit of one metre width. Expressed in words the time taken for a fixed number of people to pass through an emergency exit is inversely proportional to the 2.15 power of the width of the exit.