Weight of a Crowd.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 220, 16 September 1893, Page 3 (Supplement)

Weight of a Crowd.

Experiments Show it ls From 140 to 150 Pounds Per Square Foot.

The load which is produced by a dense crowd ot persons ia generally baken at 80 bo 100 pounds per square foob, and is considered to be bho groabeab uniformly diabribubed load for which a floor need be proportioned. Thab bhis value may be largely exceeded in an acbual crowd waa poinbed oub by Profeasor W. C. Kernot, of the Melbourne Univeraity, Auatralia, in a recent paper before the Victorian Insbibube of Engineers. In an actual trial a class of students averaging 153*5 pounds each_ in weighb were crowded in a lobby containing 1,823 square feeb, making an average floor load of 134*7 pounds, There was sbill room to have placed another man, which would have brought up the loading to 143*1 pounds per square foob. Professor Kernob also quobed from Stoney, who placed fifty-eighb Irish labourers, averaging 145 pounds each in weighb, in an empty ahip deckhouse measuring fifty-seven square feeb, floor area. This was a load of 147.4 pounds per square foob. In another teat, with seventy-three labourers crowded into a hub 9 feeb by 9 feeb 8 inches, Sboney produced a load ot 143 pounda per aquare foob, and eabimated that two or three more men could have been Bqueezed in. Ib appears from bheso experiments thab while the figures ordinarily assumed of 80 to 100 pounds are sufficiently correct on spaces on which there is no causo to induce the collection of greab crowds, larger figures, say 140 to 150 pounds per squaro foot, should be used for railway stations and platforms, entrances and exits to places of publio assemblies or of office buildings, biidge sidewalks, pavements ovor vaults, and obher places where denae crowds are likely to gather.