To further broaden the academic horizons of faculty and students and deepen international exchange and cooperation in the field of rail transportation, Professor Luis Baeza from the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain was invited to our university on the afternoon of June 27. He delivered a specialized academic lecture titled Wheel-Rail Contact Problems in Conference Room 8A521 of the Modern Transportation Engineering Center. The lecture was organized by School of Urban Railway Transportation, hosted by Professor Sheng Xiaozhen, and attended by faculty members including Zhong Shuoqiao, Wen Yongpeng, and Li Xia, as well as dozens of students. The event was marked by an enthusiastic atmosphere and a strong academic focus.
At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Sheng Xiaozhen extended a warm welcome to Professor Luis Baeza and briefly introduced his academic background and research achievements to the audience. He encouraged faculty and students to seize this opportunity for international exchange, delve into cutting-edge academic theories, learn from advanced research methodologies, and actively engage in academic exploration and innovative practices in the field of rail transportation.
During the lecture, Professor Luis Baeza provided an in-depth explanation of modeling the flexibility and rotational inertia effects of wheelsets and their application in instrumented wheelsets. He introduced a high-precision wheelset dynamics model that simultaneously considers structural flexibility and rotational dynamic characteristics. Combining practical testing scenarios, he elaborated on the dynamic measurement and analysis of wheel-rail contact forces by arranging strain gauges on the wheelset surface. Professor Luis Baeza emphasized that under high-speed operations or conditions with high load frequencies, the dynamic effects of the wheelset system on contact forces cannot be overlooked. Static models often fail to accurately reflect real-world situations, making dynamic modeling crucial for improving the precision of engineering predictions.
Through comparisons of simulations and experimental data from multiple typical scenarios, Professor Luis Baeza demonstrated the advantages of his model in capturing the dynamic characteristics of wheel-rail interactions. The presentation, which balanced theoretical depth and engineering practicality, sparked keen interest among the audience. Faculty and students listened attentively and actively participated in discussions, raising questions on key technical issues such as the optimization of flexible body modeling parameters, algorithms for capturing nonlinear responses, and improving the accuracy of wheel-rail force inversion. Professor Luis Baeza addressed each question in detail, fostering a harmonious and productive exchange.
Luis Baeza is a professor at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering of Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain. He has long been engaged in research areas such as vehicle-track coupled dynamics, wheel-rail relationship modeling and analysis, and numerical integration algorithms, and currently serves as the head of the vehicle-track dynamics research group. His research achievements are extensive, with over 90 academic papers published, including more than 70 in international SCI journals since 2018. According to Google Scholar, his papers have been cited over 870 times, with an h-index of 18, reflecting his significant academic influence in the field.
This visit marked Professor Luis Baeza's first in-person academic exchange at our university, following his previous online lectures for faculty and students of the college. The success of this lecture not only provided a platform for direct dialogue between our faculty and students and an internationally renowned scholar but also laid a solid foundation for promoting long-term research collaboration between our university and Universitat Politècnica de València in the field of rail transportation. It holds great significance for fostering the sharing of academic resources and joint talent cultivation between the two institutions.