Kinetic models of BGK type and their numerical integration

This minicourse contains a description of recent results on the modelling of rarefied gases in weakly non equilibrium regimes, and the numerical methods used to approximate the resulting equations. Therefore this work focuses on BGK type approximations, rather than on full Boltzmann models. Within this framework, models for polyatomic gases and for mixtures will be considered. We will also address numerical issues characteristic of the difficulties one encounters when integrating kinetic equations. In particular, we will consider asymptotic preserving schemes, which are designed to approximate equilibrium solutions, without resolving the fast scales of the approach to equilibrium.Comment: Lecture notes for the 9th summer school Methods And Models Of Kinetic Theory, M&MKT 201

The BGK approximation of kinetic models for traffic

We study spatially non-homogeneous kinetic models for vehicular traffic flow. Classical formulations, as for instance the BGK equation, lead to unconditionally unstable solutions in the congested regime of traffic. We address this issue by deriving a modified formulation of the BGK-type equation. The new kinetic model allows to reproduce conditionally stable non-equilibrium phenomena in traffic flow. In particular, stop and go waves appear as bounded backward propagating signals occurring in bounded regimes of the density where the model is unstable. The BGK-type model introduced here also offers the mesoscopic description between the microscopic follow-the-leader model and the macroscopic Aw-Rascle and Zhang model

Analysis of a heterogeneous kinetic model for traffic flow

In this work we extend a recent kinetic traffic model to the case of more than one class of vehicles, each of which is characterized by few different microscopic features. We consider a Boltzmann-like framework with only binary interactions, which take place among vehicles belonging to the various classes. Our approach differs from the multi-population kinetic model based on a lattice of speeds because here we assume continuous velocity spaces and we introduce a parameter describing the physical velocity jump performed by a vehicle that increases its speed after an interaction. The model is discretized in order to investigate numerically the structure of the resulting fundamental diagrams and the system of equations is analyzed by studying well posedness. Moreover, we compute the equilibria of the discretized model and we show that the exact asymptotic kinetic distributions can be obtained with a small number of velocities in the grid. Finally, we introduce a new probability law in order to attenuate the sharp capacity drop occurring in the diagrams of traffic.Comment: 31 page

Derivation and stability analysis of macroscopic multi-lane models for vehicular traffic flow

The mathematical modeling and the stability analysis of multi-lane traffic in the macroscopic scale is considered. We propose a new first order model derived from microscopic dynamics with lane changing, leading to a coupled system of hyperbolic balance laws. The macroscopic limit is derived without assuming ad hoc space and time scalings. The analysis of the stability of the equilibria of the model is discussed. The proposed numerical tests confirm the theoretical findings between the macroscopic and microscopic modeling, and the results of the stability analysis

A consistent kinetic model for a two-component mixture of polyatomic molecules

We consider a multi component gas mixture with translational and internal energy degrees of freedom assuming that the number of particles of each species remains constant. We will illustrate the derived model in the case of two species, but the model can be easily generalized to multiple species. The two species are allowed to have different degrees of freedom in internal energy and are modelled by a system of kinetic ES-BGK equations featuring two interaction terms to account for momentum and energy transfer between the species. We prove consistency of our model: conservation properties, positivity of the temperature, H-theorem and convergence to a global equilibrium in the form of a global Maxwell distribution. Thus, we are able to derive the usual macroscopic conservation laws. For numerical purposes we apply the Chu reduction to the developed model for polyatomic gases and give an application for a gas consisting of a mono atomic and a diatomic species.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1806.1050

Fundamental diagrams in traffic flow: the case of heterogeneous kinetic models

Experimental studies on vehicular traffic provide data on quantities like density, flux, and mean speed of the vehicles. However, the diagrams relating these variables (the fundamental and speed diagrams) show some peculiarities not yet fully reproduced nor explained by mathematical models. In this paper, resting on the methods of kinetic theory, we introduce a new traffic model which takes into account the heterogeneous nature of the flow of vehicles along a road. In more detail, the model considers traffic as a mixture of two or more populations of vehicles (e.g., cars and trucks) with different microscopic characteristics, in particular different lengths and/or maximum speeds. With this approach we gain some insights into the scattering of the data in the regime of congested traffic clearly shown by actual measurements.Comment: 26 pages, 11 figure