Abstract: In order to divide the highway network hierarchy reasonably，first，both the complex network theory and the dual topology method are adopted to abstract highway sections into different nodes． Then，the weights of the nodes are calculated by considering the traffic volume and the coherence degree，and a weighted adjacency matrix based on the gravity model is obtained． Moreover，the importance degree，closeness and betweenness of the nodes are calculated with the help of Matlab，the comprehensive weight of the nodes is obtained by means of the variation coefficient method，and the nodes satisfying the mileage requirement are filtrated by setting the planed annual mile-age as the control variable． Finally，a classification of highway network hierarchy is performed based on the fuzzy clustering of the filtrated nodes． The results show that the application of complex network theory to the classification of highway network hierarchy helps to obtain the mileage and space distribution of each highway grade，which bene-fits the level improvement of road networks．

Key words: traffic engineering, highway network hierarchy, complex network theory, weighted adjacency matrix, fuzzy clustering