Rail strain under different loads and conditions as a source of information for operation

The structural analysis and knowledge of the forces acting between the wheel and the rail, can give important information about the safety of the operation and the track maintenance of railways. The complexity of the analysis comes from the variability of the wheel-rail contact point modelled by the use of multi-body simulations. The theoretical calculations, used to study this problem, are based on the finite element method. The purpose of the work, described in this paper, is to find specific areas on the rail surfaces with stress and strain features, which allow evaluation of the influence of different loading factors. The ratio between the forces and strains could be a good index to study the rail stress. Using this ratio, it is possible to identify the effects of the different kinds of load and how the corresponding strains are affected by the boundary conditions