Using Finite Elements Method for Traffic Flow Analysis

Traffic flow analysis was considered as one of the main steps in transportation planning and engineering. Various methods have been developed for this purpose. Most of these methods are based on available equations in traffic engineering. Mathematical methods used for analyzing traffic flow has always been very complicated and resource consuming. In 1995, using finite elements method for analyzing traffic flow was first introduced and developed over the few years. Hence it is a new look at traffic flow analysis which still needs lots of complex equations to be solved. In 2007, for the first time, it was suggested to simulate traffic flow as a fluid; using finite elements equations in fluid mechanics (i.e. model the vehicles in the road as a fluid in a canal). Results were considerably matching the real world case studies data. In this paper which is a part of study on the finite elements methods in transportation modeling and planning, ten different routes (e.g. bridge, intersection, roundabout) in Shiraz city (one of large scale cities of Iran) have been modeled in one of fluid mechanics modeling platform. Outputs compared with real world data by some adjustment and calibration which have been made to make it possible to match data and calculate the errors. Results show acceptable errors regarding modeling traffic flow by fluid mechanics simulation platforms. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis has been performed for acquisition of each element's role (e.g. number of lanes, maximum allowed speed and AADT) in model accuracy in Neural Network Algorithm platform.