Hyperbolicity and kinematic waves of a class of multi-population partial differential equations

Abstract

This paper studies many fundamental aspects of a newly proposed multi-class traffic flow model. For the first time it presents a complete discussion on the hyperbolicity of the system; and based upon this, the admissible waves of the Riemann problem are deeply investigated. Many important conclusions are made in discussions, and the related physical meanings are interpreted. For the confirmation of main conclusions, numerical examples are given at the end.