• Santiago Gregori, Universitat Politècnica de València
• Stefano Bruni, Politecnico di Milano

Railways are nowadays among the main mass transportation systems, with a vast growing potential due to their high efficiency and low polluting emissions. In order to develop and improve such qualities, it is essential that the design process of new components is guided by the results of numerical simulations fed by realistic models. The application of numerical methods on the railway field is currently a highly active and significant research topic. Among the wide range of phenomena present in railway dynamics, the pantograph-catenary dynamic interaction should be noted because it is the interface in charge of the proper train power supply and one of the limiting factors to increase of the operational speed. Development of wheel/rail interaction models is also a topic of special importance to achieve an accurate description of the wheelset vibro-acoustic behaviour and the full vehicle dynamics. In addition, it is also required to find ways of alleviating railway related issues such as the nuisances caused by the noise and ground vibrations generated during rolling stock pass-by. In all these problems, the use of optimization techniques is an appealing option to obtain promising results that can be eventually implemented in future railway facilities.
Therefore, the proposed mini-symposium invites all contributions from the field of numerical simulations in railway dynamics. Typical topics are expected to be, but not restricted to:
• Development of wheel-track dynamic models.
• Wheel/rail non-linear contact models.
• Dynamic simulation of pantograph-catenary interaction.
• Hardware-in-the-loop simulations for pantograph testing.
• High frequency stability and dynamics of railway vehicles.
• Optimization problems in railway dynamics.