Abstract: To reveal the vehicle queue formation and dissipation behavior on a road section with a single lane, the similarity between the growth and dissipation process of vehicle queuing and the chain reaction process of nuclear fission was described. According to the theory of nuclear chain reaction, a chain reaction model system of vehicle queuing on a road section with a single lane was built, including the vehicle queue formation model, the vehicle queue dissipation model, and the vehicle queue model for signalized intersections. By using the field survey data from a typical road section in Dalian city, vehicle queue formation and dissipation models were validated. Also, the numerical simulations for traffic streams under different conditions were made by applying MATLAB software. Based on the simulation results, the sensitivities of the propagation speed of block and dissipation signal to arrival flow rate and running speed were further analyzed. The results show that the proposed models were characterized by high precision, which can be used to calculate the propagation velocity and boundary of the chain reaction of vehicle queuing, and explain the vehicle queue behavior on a road section with a single lane. The research achievements provide a foundation for explaining the vehicle queuing behavior on a multilane road section and the chain reaction mechanism of road jam, give a theoretical basis for solving urban traffic congestion and jam problems and offer a novel idea and a method for studying traffic queue.

Key words: engineering of communications and transportation system, vehicle queuing, queue formation and dissipation, nuclear fission, chain reaction