Journal of Applied Mathematics
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 480965, 9 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/480965
Research Article

Mixed Platoon Flow Dispersion Model Based on Speed-Truncated Gaussian Mixture Distribution

School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China

Received 13 March 2013; Revised 11 May 2013; Accepted 11 May 2013

Academic Editor: Shuyu Sun

Copyright © 2013 Weitiao Wu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A mixed traffic flow feature is presented on urban arterials in China due to a large amount of buses. Based on field data, a macroscopic mixed platoon flow dispersion model (MPFDM) was proposed to simulate the platoon dispersion process along the road section between two adjacent intersections from the flow view. More close to field observation, truncated Gaussian mixture distribution was adopted as the speed density distribution for mixed platoon. Expectation maximum (EM) algorithm was used for parameters estimation. The relationship between the arriving flow distribution at downstream intersection and the departing flow distribution at upstream intersection was investigated using the proposed model. Comparison analysis using virtual flow data was performed between the Robertson model and the MPFDM. The results confirmed the validity of the proposed model.