Our research addresses several areas of railway engineering including vehicle system dynamics, train-track interaction, wheel-rail contact mechanics, noise and vibration, pantograph-catenary interaction, condition monitoring applied both to the rolling stock and to the infrastructure, active and semi-active suspensions for railway vehicles, aerodynamics of railway vehicles. Research activities include:

• theoretical analysis of railway systems (stability, curving, wheel/rail contact, noise);
• numerical modelling based on advanced computational tools such as Multi-Physics, Multi-Body, Finite Element, Computational Fluid Dynamics;
• indoor experiments using the PoliMI Wind Tunnel and facilities available at the Department’s labs, e.g. the full-scale bench for bogies, the Hardware-in-the-Loop test rig for pantographs, the block-in-ring bench for pantograph-catenary contact;
• outdoor testing e.g. pass-by noise and vibration, experimental vehicle dynamics, line testing of pantograph-catenary interaction;
• development of new sensors and measuring techniques: design and calibration of instrumented wheelsets, autonomous wireless sensor nodes for railway vehicles, smart sensors for wheelsets.