A Saturation-Based Optimal Velocity Model for Traffic Flow Dynamics

Abstract

Many headway-based car-following models describe longitudinal adaptation through linear relaxation laws, which can produce unrealistically large accelerations and limit the physical consistency of microscopic traffic dynamics. Motivated by this limitation, we develop a saturation-based extension of the classical Optimal Velocity Model (OVM) that preserves the headway-dependent desired-speed structure while introducing bounded nonlinear acceleration dynamics. Linear stability analysis shows that the proposed formulation preserves the classical long-wave instability mechanism associated with stop-and-go waves while modifying the stability threshold and enforcing bounded acceleration. Ring-road simulations support the analysis and illustrate how the model alters perturbation growth, wave amplitude, and relaxation behavior relative to the classical OVM. The resulting framework provides a compact and analytically tractable extension for studying nonlinear traffic-wave dynamics and physically constrained car-following behavior.