Assessment of Safety Against Derailment using Simulations and the Simplified Method of EN 14363 Standard

This work proposes the application of the simplified method comprised in the European standard EN 14363 as an indicator to assess the safety against derailment of railway vehicles using acceleration data from an on-board system.This approach is applied to a railway vehicle through numerical simulations with a Multibody model and a sensitivity analysis for different track irregularity scenarios in accordance with the levels established by European Standard EN 13848-5.The results show good sensitivity of the vehicle's responses to the different track irregularity scenarios, with higher acceleration values for higher peak values of track irregularities.In the most severe scenario, corresponding to the safety limit, in all simulations the vehicle derails.Finally, it is concluded that speed reduction is an effective measure to mitigate high acceleration amplitudes, thus promoting railway safety.In short, the preliminary results presented in this work showed the potential of this simplified method to be used as an indicator of track quality and consequently assist railway operators in guaranteeing traffic running safety.