A wavelet-Galerkin method for the kinematic wave model of traffic flow

In this paper, a wavelet-Galerkin formulation with domain transformation is applied to solve the kinematic wave model of traffic flow. A domain transf ormation method is employed to resolve the constraints imposed on the solut ion variables. This avoids the problem of generating invalid solution of tr affic states as with conventional numerical schemes for the wave model. Wit h the localized scaling function or wavelet, the method is also capable of capturing the shock wave in the traffic model. Moreover, due to the localiz ed characteristics of wavelets, the bandwidths of matrices are usually very small. Therefore, a robust band-matrix solver can be employed to enhance c omputational efficiency. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the ef fectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, L td.