Non classical solution of a conservation law arising in vehicular traffic modelling*

Abstract

We are interested in this paper in the modelling and numerical simulation of some phenomena that are observed in the context of car dynamics, in particular the appearance of persistent jams upstream critical points with no real cause of flux limitation. We shall consider the case of a stable jam on a freeway upstream an accident that took place on the opposite lane. This situation is not properly handled by most models, either micro-or macroscopic ones, since it corresponds to a phenomenon that does not have a counterpart in gas dynamics, for which only entropy solution are usually considered as physically feasible. The approach we propose consists in accounting for the very behaviour of agents in the neighbourhood of the discontinuity, and makes it possible to numerically recover in a robust way steady traffic jams.