Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Kinetics Of Clustering In Traffic Flows, E. Ben-Naim, P. L. Krapivsky, S. Redner

Eli Ben-Naim

We study a simple aggregation model that mimics the clustering of traffic on a one-lane roadway. In this model, each ``car'' moves ballistically at its initial velocity until it overtakes the preceding car or cluster. After this encounter, the incident car assumes the velocity of the cluster which it has just joined. The properties of the initial distribution of velocities in the small velocity limit control the long-time properties of the aggregation process. For an initial velocity distribution with a power-law tail at small velocities, $\pvim$ as $v \to 0$, a simple scaling argument shows that the average cluster size …