Possible Self-Organised Criticality and Dynamical Clustering of Traffic flow in Open Systems

Larraga, M. E.; del Rio, J. A.; Mehta, Anita

Possible Self-Organised Criticality and Dynamical Clustering of Traffic flow in Open Systems

Authors

Larraga, M. E.

del Rio, J. A.

Mehta, Anita

Description

We focus in this work on the study of traffic in open systems using a modified version of an existing cellular automaton model. We demonstrate that the open system is rather different from the closed system in its 'choice' of a unique steady-state density and velocity distribution, independently of the initial conditions, reminiscent of self-organised criticality. Quantities of interest such as average densities and velocities of cars, exhibit phase transitions between free flow and the jammed state, as a function of the braking probability R in a way that is very different from closed systems. Velocity correlation functions show that the concept of a dynamical cluster, introduced earlier in the context of granular flow is also relevant for traffic flow models.
5 pages, 8 figures