Weak formulation of boundary conditions for scalar conservation laws: An application to highway traffic modelling

This article proves the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution to a scalar conservation law on a bounded domain. A weak formulation of the boundary conditions is needed for the problem to be well posed. The existence of the solution results from the convergence of the Godunov scheme. This weak formulation is written explicitly in the context of a strictly concave flux function (relevant for highway traffic). The numerical scheme is then applied to a highway scenario with data from highway Interstate-80 obtained from the Berkeley Highway Laboratory. Finally, the existence of a minimiser of travel time is obtained, with the corresponding optimal boundary control. Copyright (C) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.