Rail machining - current practices and potential for optimisation

Current practices on rail machining show large variations in strategies and amount of grinding and milling. To identify reasons for this and suggest strategies to further optimise rail machining, objectives of machining are scrutinised and consequences of not fulfilling objectives are investigated. This leads to a discussion on potentially detrimental effects of rail machining and how to minimise these. With this background, general aspects of rail machining optimisation are discussed. The study shows several means to improve rail machining, but also how the potential is restricted by the current lack of knowledge and predictive models. This prevents quantifying benefits of innovative solutions, and complicates transfer of knowledge between different operational conditions and translations of (scaled and controlled) test results to (full-scale, uncontrolled) operational conditions.