Dynamics characteristic of pedestrians’ particular overtaking behavior based on an improved social force model

The overtaking behavior of individuals under anxious panic is a major causative factor of crowded trampling accidents. In order to simulate the overtaking behavior of individuals experiencing anxiety and panic in a single-exit room within a normal pedestrian flow, an improved social force model is proposed to simulate crowd movement at local medium and high density through introducing the bypass overtaking mechanism, the side overtaking mechanism, and the side avoidance mechanism generated by association. The numerical simulation verifies the model’s validity. The effect of the size and number of overtaking individuals on the pedestrian flow are explored. The results show that the new model can simultaneously reproduce a variety of overtaking behaviors and their associated behaviors in line with reality. The larger size of the overtaking individuals are, the easier it is to produce overtaking behaviors and the more difficult it is to overtake. With the increase of the number of overtaking individuals, the evacuation time becomes longer, but there is no linear relationship between them. When the initial pedestrian density is 0.37ped/m2, with time evolution, the appearance frequency of local density greater than 0.8ped/m2 suddenly increases, and the comfort and safety of pedestrian movement decreases. The results of this paper can enrich the social force simulation model of pedestrian flow and provide a theoretical guidance for the evacuation of pedestrian flow with a few overtaking individuals in the room. •A novel social force model is used to describe individuals’ overtaking behavior.•The overtaking mechanism and the side avoidance mechanism are introduced.•The effect of the size and number of overtaking individuals are explored.•The larger size of pedestrians are, the easier it is to produce overtaking behavior.