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The qualitative theory of differential equations is applied to investigate the traveling wave solution to an 'anisotropic' higher-order viscous traffic flow model under the Lagrange coordinate system. The types and stabilities of the equilibrium points are discussed in the phase plane. Through the numerical simulation, the overall distribution structures of trajectories are drawn to analyze the relation between the phase diagram and the selected conservative solution variables, and the influences of the parameters on the system are studied. The limit-circle, limit circle-spiral point, saddle-spiral point and saddle-nodal point solutions are obtained. These steady-state solutions provide good explanation for the phenomena of the oscillatory and homogeneous congestions in real-world traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A standard conservation form is derived in this paper. The hyperbolicity of Helbing's fluid dynamic traffic flow model is proved, which is essential to the general analytical and numerical study of this model. On the basis of this conservation form, a local discontinuous Galerkin scheme is designed to solve the resulting system efficiently. The evolution of an unstable equilibrium traffic state leading to a stable stop-and-go traveling wave is simulated. This simulation also verifies that the model is truly improved by the introduction of the modified diffusion coefficients, and thus helps to protect vehicles from collisions and avoide the appearance of the extremely large density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In numerical approximations of nearly hydrostatic flows, a proper representation of the dominant hydrostatic balance is of crucial importance: unbalanced truncation errors can induce unacceptable spurious motions, e.g., in dynamical cores of models for numerical weather prediction (NWP) in particular near steep topography. In this paper we develop a new strategy for the construction of discretizations that are “well-balanced” with respect to dominant hydrostatics. The classical idea of formulating the momentum balance in terms of deviations of pressure from a balanced background distribution is realized here through local, time dependent hydrostatic reconstructions. Balanced discretizations of the pressure gradient and of the gravitation source term are achieved through a “discrete Archimedes'' buoyancy principle”. This strategy is applied to extend an explicit standard finite volume Godunov-type scheme for compressible flows with minimal modifications. The resulting method has the following features: (i) It inherits its conservation properties from the underlying base scheme. (ii) It is exactly balanced, even on curvilinear grids, for a large class of near-hydrostatic flows. (iii) It solves the full compressible flow equations without reference to a background state that is defined for an entire vertical column of air. (iv) It is robust with respect to details of the implementation, such as the choice of slope limiting functions, or the particularities of boundary condition discretizations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]