Wave propagation of the traffic flow dynamic model based on wavefront expansion.

Abstract

This paper discusses propagation of perturbations along traffic flow modeled by a modified second-order macroscopic model through the wavefront expansion technique. The coefficients in this expansion satisfy a sequence of transport equations that can be solved analytically. One of these analytic solutions yields information about wavefront shock. Numerical simulations based on a Pade approximation of this expansion were done at the end of this paper and results showed that propagation of perturbations at traffic flow speed conforms to the theoretical analysis results.