Highway Modeling. Part II: Advection and Diffusion of SF6 Tracer Gas

Abstract

A finite-difference highway model is presented which uses surface layer similarity theory and a vehicle wake theory to determine the atmospheric structure along a roadway. Surface similarity is used to determine the wind profile and eddy diffusion profiles in the ambient atmosphere. The ambient atmosphere is treated as a basic-state atmosphere on which the disturbances due to vehicle wakes are added. A conservation of species equation is then solved using an upstream-flux corrected technique which insures positive concentrations. Simulation results from the highway model are compared with 58 half-hour periods of data (meteorological and SF6 tracer) taken by General Motors. The results show that the predictions of this model are closer to the observations than those of the Gaussian-formulated EPA highway model (HIWAY).