Influence of guidance signs on platform evacuation in suburban railway tunnel under smoke and obstacle environment

Once a train stops in a tunnel section and requires emergency evacuation, the large distance between stations and long walking distances in the underground spaces of suburban railway systems pose potential risks to the evacuation process on tunnel platforms, especially in complex environments. This study utilized Virtual Reality (VR) technology to construct a virtual experimental platform for tunnel evacuation in suburban railway systems, simulating different combinations of smoke and obstacle conditions. By requiring participants to wear VR glasses and walk on an omnidirectional treadmill for moving, as well as complete psychological questionnaires, the study reveals the influences of No Guiding (NG) signs, Wall-Guided (WG) signs, and Central axis Guidance (CG) signs on the movement abilities and psychological behaviors of participants contrastively. The results show that either smoke conditions or obstacle positions affect the mental stress of participants, and the guidance sign has a positive effect on reducing the mental stress. There is an inverse relationship between mental stress and movement abilities. WG and CG signs respectively lead participants to walk closer to walls and along the central axis, which is conducive to reducing the variation in participants’ behavior characteristics when circumventing obstacles on the wall side or track side under smoke conditions, respectively. Additionally, CG signs reduce the speed fluctuations of participants before circumventing obstacles, improving the stability of the distance from the wall and speed under smoke conditions, compared to NG and WG signs. These findings contribute to understanding the evacuation psychological-behavioral-movement characteristics of pedestrians on evacuation platforms in suburban railway tunnels and provide a basis for improving the safety design of evacuation guidance signs.