Research of highway bottlenecks based on catastrophe theory

Accidents in the highway always cause lane occupancy but may not cause congestion. This paper analyses the theory combined with vissim for simulation and matlab for data analysis, which finds that the relationship between highway bottlenecks and congestion can be explained by catastrophe theory. Relations of traffic flow parameters (flow rate — density) will result in sudden change. That means the traffic congestion will suddenly become serious but not slowly become serious as traffic flow increases. The study of catastrophe theory of highway bottlenecks is very helpful for traffic control and transport phenomena prediction.