Railway safety stays on track

A computer modelling program that may help prevent rail accidents by more accurately predicting vehicle behaviour is being developed by

(MMU) and

.

MMU's rail technology unit and Phoenix, a manufacturer of ultrasonic testing equipment, have drawn on work by universities and rail companies throughout the world to create an optimised computer modelling approach that aims to be faster and more precise than existing systems.

Computer simulation programmes are widely used to evaluate problems such as rolling contact fatigue on railway vehicles.

The simulations predict the stresses that occur in the area the wheels come into contact with the rail.

The area, typically the size of a thumbnail, has to contend with a number of forces from the train at any one time.

Prof Simon Iwnicki, director of studies at MMU's rail technology unit, told

that contact conditions are difficult to predict because of the high forces and the short time in which they pass a particular point on the rail, and because the material behaviour is highly non-linear at these forces. 'All computer packages simplify matters to some extent to allow the analysis to be completed within an acceptable time but the effect of these simplifications is not well understood,' he said.