Error study of rail/wheel point contact method for moving trains with rail roughness

This study investigates the accuracy of the point contact scheme for trains moving on rails with irregularities. The advantages of this scheme are that it requires only linear analysis, a coarse mesh, and low CPU time. Two validations were performed. The first one compared this method with the surface contact method that models the actual wheel–rail contact behavior. Finite element results indicate that the two schemes almost produce identical results. The second validation used field measurements to study the accuracy of the point contact scheme applied to train–rail–bridge problems. The comparison indicates that finite element analyses are acceptably accurate.