Platoon-based macroscopic model for intelligent traffic flow

Abstract

This paper proposes a macroscopic model to describe the dynamics of intelligent traffic flow where intelligent vehicles are driving closer to each other than manual vehicles and operating in a form of many platoons each of which contains several vehicles. The model is developed from a car-following model which allows us to obtain well tractable macroscopic equations for such platoon-based traffic operation. A linear stability diagram is constructed from the developed model based on the linear stability method for a certain model parameter set. It is found analytically that platoon-based driving behaviour of intelligent vehicles enhances the stabilisation of traffic flow with respect to a small perturbation. Numerical simulation of an open freeway with an on-ramp bottleneck supports our analytical results. We have argued that the newly developed macroscopic model will provide a better insight into the dynamics of intelligent traffic flow.

Keywords:

• platoon operation
• intelligent vehicles
• generalised force model
• macroscopic traffic model
• linear instabilities

The author thanks the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding project EP/J002186/1.