Keywords: railway dynamics, wheel wear, multi-body system, wear, mission profile, wheel and rail profile.

Railway operators and infrastructure companies increasingly demand reduced Life Cycle Costs (LCC) and more track friendly vehicles, which requires the optimization of vehicle-track interactions and the minimization of track damage. To manage the trade-off between high speed performance on straight tracks and good running in curves, ALSTOM experts have concentrated their efforts on optimizing the vehicle design using virtual simulations in general and Multi-Body system (MBS) simulations of the running dynamics of the train. The models, methods and tools developed to achieve this goal include the in-house development of a wear evaluation tool (AWARE) used for the wheel and rail wear prediction, as well as a wheel profile evolution with mileage. This article presents a summary of these methods and models, with a focus on the analysis of wheel wear with the MBS codes SIMPACK and VAMPIRE/AWARE. We complete the analysis with a discussion of the comparison between our results and the ones obtained through simulations with field data, collected during indoor and on-track tests. This paper presents relevant findings regarding the impact of track/vehicle interactions on the wheel wear and rail profiles, the friction conditions and the state of maintenance of the lubricating device. Lastly, we emphasize the need to consider the real service loads for fatigue dimensioning of rolling stock components.

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