Towards Modeling Road Tunnels: A Petri Nets based Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to develop a mathematical model using Petri nets to simulate the traffic flow inside the road tunnel. First, a new modular Petri net theory is used; the modeling approach shown in this paper for modeling a specific road tunnel can also be applied for the other tunnels (reusable modules). Second, since the traffic inside road tunnels is intrinsically continuous, the roads are segmented to make the processes discrete; the segments become the basic building block of road tunnel models. Third, the modular Petri net theory and the modular Petri net model are implemented using the software GPenSIM to model and analyze real-life road tunnels.