Keywords: railway, rail, rolling contact fatigue, wear, field study, regression, eddy current, inspection, curve radius, cant.

A field study of wear and rolling contact fatigue (RFC) has been conducted in the Finnish rail network, in order to study the predictability of rail degradation with track geometry and loading parameters. Over 8000 measurement points were selected in seventy-six curves on five different railway lines. Simple linear regression was able to predict rail wear very well and the RCF of high-rail fairly well.

Numerous problems have been encountered during the analysis of these field measurements. Since these problems are common to many other studies, this paper is dedicated to the discussion of these problems and suggestions for their solutions. Also, smaller issues regarding regression analysis are addressed.

The problems are divided into three main categories, which are the quality of the data, sampling from mixed populations, and the correlation of track geometry and loading parameters. The quality of the data involved measurement accuracy and the calculation of the degradation speed. The mixed populations' problem means that the rails do not degrade uniformly, and measurements from undamaged rail weight down the results of the analysis. The correlation problem means that variables that are used to predict rail degradation are not independent, which has important implications to regression analysis and related conclusions.

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