ESTUDO TEÓRICO E COMPUTACIONAL DESENVOLVIDO POR DOCENTE DO IFUSP EM COAUTORIA COM OUTROS PESQUISADORES NA ÁREA DE FLUÍDOS COMPLEXOS É DESTAQUE NA REVISTA PHYSICAL REVIEW X, DA AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY
O Prof. André Vieira, docente do Departamento de Física Geral, do IFUSP, é coautor de um artigo que acabou de ser publicado na prestigiosa revista Physical Review X, um periódico de alto impacto da American Physical Society. Trata-se de um estudo teórico e computacional com aplicações potenciais que vão da dinâmica de pedestres ao transporte de fluidos em canais microscópicos.
Resumo da pesquisa:
Garantir o fluxo eficiente de pedestres através de corredores de passagem, como em terminais de metrô, é um problema de significativa relevância para muitas cidades. Por meio da modelagem de partículas auto-dirigidas, pesquisadores mostram que modular a forma das paredes do corredor pode ajudar a separar pedestres em contra-fluxo.
We show, computationally and analytically, that asymmetrically shaped walls can organize the flow of pedestrians driven in opposite directions through a corridor. Precisely, a two-lane ordered state emerges in which people always walk on the left-hand side (or right-hand side), controlled by the system’s parameters. This effect depends on features of the channel geometry, such as the asymmetry of the profile and the channel width, as well as on the density and the drift velocity of pedestrians, and the intensity of noise. We investigate in detail the influence of these parameters on the flow and discover a crossover between ordered and disordered states. Our results show that an ordered state only appears within a limited range of drift velocities. Moreover, increasing noise may suppress such flow organization, but the flow is always sustained. This is in contrast with the “freezing by heating” phenomenon according to which pedestrians tend to clog in smooth channels for strong noise [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 1240 (2000)]. Therefore, the ratchetlike effect proposed here acts on the system not only to induce a “keep-left” behavior but also to prevent the freezing by heating clogging phenomenon. Besides pedestrian flow, this new phenomenon has other potential applications in microfluidics systems.
GLOSSÁRIO:
Keep-Left Behavior Induced by Asymmetrically Profiled Walls
C. L. N. Oliveira, A. P. Vieira, D. Helbing, J. S. Andrade, Jr., and H. J. Herrmann
Phys. Rev. X 6, 011003 – Published 7 January 2016
Link para o artigo: http://journals.aps.org/prx/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevX.6.011003
