Occupant Evacuation Simulation Model during Civil Aircraft Emergency

A computer simulation to verify occupant evacuation within 90 s during aircraft emergency can supply beneficial information for the full-scale evacuation experiment in the initial airworthiness certification of the advanced regional jet (ARJ) developed by China. Based on cellular automata and multi-agent theory, a civil aircraft cabin occupant emergency evacuation model (CACOEM) was established. In the model, considering their psychology in an emergency circumstance of aircraft, occupants were classified into different roles according to their distinctive features of behavior; four sub-models, i.e., civil aircraft cabin model, occupants' characteristics model, occupants' behavior model, and occupants' movement model were involved. In addition, simulation software CabinEvacu was developed and applied to the regional commercial aircrafts with 100 seats. According to the requirements on passenger age-sex proportion in Transport Aircraft Airworthiness Standards: Transport Category Airplanes (CCAR25-R4), 1000 times of occupant emergency evacuation simulations were made in a scenario where three hatches are opened in front, middle, and rear areas, respectively. The results show that the average evacuation time is 68.7 s, which is consistent with the result obtained by the evacuation test simulation and investigation algorithm (ETSIA).