Gabor Orosz May 2007

Schedule for Gabor Orosz, visiting 21-23 May 2007

Monday

11:00a	Seminar, CDS library
12:00p	Lunch with Richard
3:30p	Jessica Gonzalez and Luke Durant, DGC (12 Steele)
5:00p	Open
6:00p	Grand Challenge Project Meeting (meet outside 110 Steele)

Tuesday

Additional meetings with DGC students (TBD)

9:30a	Henrik Sandberg, 17 Steele
11:00a	Schiff seminar, CDS library
12:00p	Lunch with Richard

Seminar Abstract

A nonlinear car-following model of highway traffic is considered that includes the reaction-time delay of drivers. Linear stability investigations show that the uniform flow solution may loose its stability via Hopf bifurcations. Studying these bifurcations by normal form calculations reveal the possibility of bistable behaviour. Regions in parameter space are determined by numerical continuation techniques where the stable uniform flow co-exists with single or multiple stop-and-go traffic jams. Detailed stability investigation of the corresponding oscillations explains the low-dimensional dynamics of the merging and the dispersion of traffic jams. Stochastic effects are also studied by numerical simulation when a driver parameter is varied according to a random walk. This is a joint work with Gabor Stepan (Budapest University of Technology and Economics) and with Eddie Wilson and Bernd Krauskopf (University of Bristol).