COMPDYN 2013 4 th ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering M. Papadrakakis, V. Papadopoulos, V. Plevris (eds.) Kos Island, Greece, 12–14 June 2013 CHARACTERIZATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF RAIL WEAR ON TRAIN DYNAMICS Nicolas Lestoille 1,2 , Guillaume Perrin 1,2,3 , and Christine Funfschilling 2 1 Université Paris Est, Modélisation et Simulation Multi-Echelle (MSME UMR 8208 CNRS) 5 Bd. Descartes, 77454 Marne-la-Vallée, France e-mail: {nicolas.lestoille,guillaume.perrin}@sncf.fr 2 SNCF, Innovation and Research Department Immeuble Lumière, 40 avenue des Terroirs de France, 75611, Paris, Cedex 12, France e-mail: christine.funfschilling@sncf.fr 3 Université Paris Est, Navier (UMR 8205 ENPC-IFSTTAR-CNRS) Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 6 et 8 Avenue Blaise Pascal, Cité Descartes, Champs sur Marne, 77455 Marne-la-Vallée, Cedex 2, France Keywords: Rail Wear, Railway Dynamics, Wheel-Rail Contact, Statistical Characterization of Contact. Abstract. The study presented here aims at characterizing the influence of the rail wear on the train dynamic response. Rail profiles have been measured on a real track and post-processed in order to be used in a mutlibody simulation of the train’s response. Wear modes have been extracted from the measures with a Principal Orthogonal Decomposition (POD). The profiles have been projected on these modes, giving a good characterization of the profiles’ geometry. In a second step, the train’s dynamic response on the measured track is simulated with a multibody software. The result shows that wear reduces the train’s stability. 2080