Development of a wayside measurement system for the evaluation of wheel-rail lateral contact force

Considering the safety against derailment, it is essentially that a vehicle respects the force limits imposed by standards. This paper presents an experimental wayside measurement system for the measurement of the wheel-rail lateral contact force. While there are several well-known solutions for the monitoring of the vertical force, the measurement of the lateral one by means wayside systems is rather uncommon because of overlapping effects that are always present with vertical loads. The system, thanks to its particular sensors configuration, is instead able to isolate the strain effects of the vertical force from those of the lateral one. The research is based on laboratory tests, finite element simulations and on field test directly on a railway line in service. Besides, combining the system with another one for monitoring of the vertical force, it has shown the possibility to evaluate the derailment ratio for each train passing over the measurement site.