Abstract
Wheel/Rail geometric constraint relationships, such as effective conicity and gravitational stiffness, strongly influence the lateral dynamics of railway vehicles. In general, these geometric contact characteristics are nonlinear functions of the wheelset lateral displacement. There is a need to develop a wheel/rail geometric contact simulation program for wheels and rails with arbitrary profiles for the prediction of the dynamic behavior of railway vehicles. An algorithm to simulate any combination of wheels and rails is employed and a GUI for easy analysis is constructed. The simulation program is applied to KTX which will run on both KTX and conventional rails, two rail standards having different rail profiles. The results show that the two rail systems have different geometric contact characteristic
