In the evacuation route design of enclosed buildings and open spaces

the influence of the angle of corners on the occupant evacuation is generally ignored and only a few qualitative results on the corner effect have been given in literatures.However

in order to avoid possible fatality caused by evacuation congestion in any emergency event

such as fire or terrorism attack

the corner effects should be carefully and thoroughly researched

which is just the purpose of this paper.With the help of SIMULEX

the influence of corners of different angles on the evacuation is quantitatively studied and some general knowledge on the corner effect laws are obtained and some suggestions on the improvement of occupant evacuation route design are proposed as well.