Results are presented from a recent study on a variation of a new nonequilibrium continuum traffic flow model in which traffic sound speed is constant. Hence this model is called the frozen-wave model. This model resembles the Payne-Whitham model but avoids the "back-traveling" of the latter. For this frozen-wave model, the Riemann problem is analyzed for its homogeneous system, two numerical solution methods are developed to solve it, and numerical simulations are carried out under both stable and unstable traffic conditions. These results show that under stable conditions, the model behaves similarly to the Payne-Whitham model. However, under unstable traffic conditions, it has nonphysical solutions or no solutions when a vacuum problem occurs. This study, on the one hand, provides a more complete picture of the properties of this frozen-wave model and reduces the risk of improper applications of it. On the other hand, it also highlights the need to adopt a density-dependent sound speed.
Abstract