Nonstandard second-order formulation of the LWR model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nonstandard second-order formulation of the LWR traffic model using hyperreal infinitesimals, establishing its equivalence with the classical model and analyzing stability, collision conditions, and numerical solutions.

Contribution

It presents a novel nonstandard second-order model based on Phillips' approach, proves its equivalence to the LWR model, and develops methods for ensuring physically meaningful solutions.

Findings

The nonstandard model matches shock and rarefaction waves of LWR.

Collision-free conditions are more general than CFL.

Numerical methods like symplectic Euler yield realistic results.

Abstract

We present a second-order formulation of the LWR model based on Phillips' model (Phillips, 1979); but the model is nonstandard with a hyperreal infinitesimal relaxation time. Since the original Phillips model is unstable with three different definitions of stability in both Eulerian and Lagrangian coordinates, we cannot use traditional methods to prove the equivalence between the second-order model, which can be considered the zero-relaxation limit of Phillips' model, and the LWR model, which is the equilibrium counterpart of Phillips' model. Instead, we resort to a nonstandard method based on the equivalence relationship between second-order continuum and car-following models established in (Jin, 2016) and prove that the nonstandard model and the LWR model are equivalent, since they have the same anisotropic car-following model and stability property. We further derive conditions for the nonstandard model to be forward-traveling and collision-free, prove that the collision-free condition is consistent with but more general than the CFL condition (Courant et al., 1928), and demonstrate that only anisotropic and symplectic Euler discretization methods lead to physically meaningful solutions. We numerically solve the lead-vehicle problem and show that the nonstandard second-order model has the same shock and rarefaction wave solutions as the LWR model for both Greenshields and triangular fundamental diagrams; for a non-concave fundamental diagram we show that the collision-free condition, but not the CFL condition, yields physically meaningful results. Finally we present a correction method to eliminate negative speeds and collisions in general second-order models, and verify the method with a numerical example.