Two effective temperatures in traffic flow models: analogies with granular flow

M.E. Lárraga, J.A. del Rı́o and Anita Mehta

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2002, vol. 307, issue 3, 527-547

Abstract: We present a model of traffic flow, with rules that describe the behaviour of automated vehicles in an open system. We show first of all that the fundamental diagram of this system collapses to a point, where states of free and jammed traffic can coexist in phase space. This leads us to consider separately the roles of average velocities and densities as better descriptors of the actual state of the traffic. Next, we observe that the transition between free and jammed traffic as a function of the braking parameter R is different for high and low initial densities, in the steady state; it turns out to be ‘smeared out’ for low densities, a behaviour which is already portended by the transient behaviour of the system. Our results indicate strongly that, at least for such models, two effective temperatures (one related to R, and the other to the density) are needed to describe the global behaviour of this system in statistical mechanical terms. Analogies with granular flow are discussed in this context.

Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437101005830
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:307:y:2002:i:3:p:527-547

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(01)00583-0

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().