Macroscopic traffic flow modelling with adaptive cruise control: Development and numerical solutionMacroscopic traffic flow modelling with adaptive cruise control: Development and numerical solution Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Δημοσίευση σε Περιοδικό με Κριτές 2016-04-212015enThe incorporation of two macroscopic approaches reflecting Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) traffic dynamics in a gas-kinetic (GKT) traffic flow model is presented. The first approach was recently analyzed in the literature aiming to describe the effects induced by the ACC and CACC systems due to changes of the speed of the leading car(s) by the introduction of an acceleration/deceleration term. The second approach is a novel one and is based on the introduction of a relaxation term that satisfies the time/space-gap principle of ACC or CACC systems. In both approaches, the relaxation time is assigned on multiple leading vehicles in the CACC case; whereas in the ACC case this relaxation time is only assigned to the direct leading vehicle. We numerically approximate the resulting models by an accurate and robust high-resolution finite volume relaxation scheme, where the nonlinear system of partial differential equations is first recast to a diagonalizable semi-linear system and is then discretized by a higher-order WENO scheme. Numerical simulations investigate the effect of the different ACC and CACC approaches to traffic flow macroscopic stability with respect to perturbations introduced in a ring road and to flow characteristics in open freeways with merging flows at an on-ramp. Following from the numerical results, it can be concluded that CACC vehicles increase the stabilization of traffic flow, with respect to both small and large perturbations, compared to ACC ones. Further, the proposed CACC approach can better improve the dynamic equilibrium capacity and traffic dynamics, especially at the on-ramp bottleneck.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 321132, project TRAMAN21.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Computers and Mathematics with Applications701921-1947Delis_et_al_CMA2015_manuscript.pdfChania [Greece]Library of TUC2016-04-21application/pdf2.8 MBfree Delis Anargyros Δελης Αναργυρος Nikolos Ioannis Νικολος Ιωαννης Papageorgiou Markos Παπαγεωργιου Μαρκος Elsevier Traffic flow dynamics Macroscopic traffic flow models Cooperative adaptive cruise control Hyperbolic conservation laws