STABILITY ANALYSIS OF VEHICLE BEHAVIOR IN A LONG PLATOON

Abstract

A vehicle platoon is the method of the group of vehicles traveling in short inter-vehicle distance. It can increase the traffic capacity in keeping the traffic safety. Since, in the platoon of vehicles, the vehicles travel in short inter-vehicle distance, the traffic safety depends on the vehicle distance. In this paper, the vehicle velocity is controlled according to the car-following models. The vehicles travelling at the rear of the platoon refer to their frontal vehicles for controlling their velocity. The stability analysis of the models leads the adequate range of the model parameters in which vehicles can control the vehicle distance safely without crush to the preceding vehicle. The stability analysis reveals that the stable region of the parameters becomes wider according to the increase of the number of the frontal vehicles. Finally, the simulation results show that the stability analysis can give the adequate value of the model parameter.