A Kriging modeling approach applied to the railways case

This paper deals with Kriging modeling applied for optimizing the braking performances for freight trains. In particular, it focuses on mass distribution optimization to reduce the effects of in-train forces among vehicles, e.g. compression and tensile forces, in-train emergency braking. Kriging models are applied with covariance structure based on the Matérn function, and by introducing specific input parameters to better outline the payload distribution on the train, by also evaluating the shape of the payload distribution. Satisfactory results have been obtained considering compression forces, tensile forces and their sum, and by also evaluating residuals and diagnostic measures.