“…For example, in predicting fatigue life of rails and wheels (Desimone et al, 2006, Ekberg et al, 2002, simple engineering formulas are commonly utilized together with Multibody system(MBS) analysis. However, due to the assumption of rigid components and elastic material behaviour in MBS simulation, a continuum approach, Finite element method(FEM) cooperating with advanced fatigue life models (Liu et al, 2006, Ringsberg et al, 2000, Sraml et al, 2003 is often employed to do crack initiation/propagation analysis because of its striking versatility. In FEM analysis, material behaviour can be described by sophisticated elasto-plastic models.…”