Simon Iwnicki (Editor)_ Maksym Spiryagin (Editor)_ Colin Cole (Editor)_ Tim McSweeney (Editor) - Handbook of Railway Vehicle Dynamics, Second Edition-CRC Press (2019)

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Contributors
Technology in 1996. Dr. Olofsson has 20 years of research experience on the tribology of the wheelrail
contact. His main research interests include interfaces and especially simulation and prediction
of friction and wear, mainly applied to problems in mechanical, automotive and railway engineering.
New research interests include airborne particles from wear processes such as in disc brakes and
the railway wheel to rail contact.
Anna Orlova is deputy director in scientific and technical development for Research and Production
Corporation ‘United Wagon Company’ and CEO of its subsidiary, the All-Union Research and
Development Center for Transportation Technology (St. Petersburg, Russia), working on the development
of innovative freight wagons and their components for CIS, North American, European
and other markets. United Wagon Company carries out the full cycle of research and development
of freight wagons, starting from marketing, design and prototype production, production technology
development, preliminary and operational testing, development of maintenance strategies and
repair technology. Dr. Orlova’s special interests include optimisation of running gear parameters for
dynamic performance, evaluation of design schemes and the development of simulation models and
testing methods. Dr. Orlova is a supervisor of postgraduate students at Petersburg State Transport
University and the author of several textbooks on bogie design and multibody dynamics simulation.
Oldrich Polach is an independent consultant and assessor, and an honorary professor at the Technische
Universität Berlin. From 2001 to 2016, he was chief engineer dynamics in Bombardier Transportation,
Winterthur, Switzerland, responsible for dynamics specialists in Business Unit Bogies Europe. He is
a well-recognised expert in railway vehicle dynamics and wheel-rail contact. He acted for 20 years
as a member of the working group ‘Interaction Vehicle-Track’ of the European Committee for
Standardisation CEN TC 256 and is accredited by the Railway Federal Authority in Germany for the
assessment of railway vehicles. Professor Polach teaches railway vehicle dynamics at the ETH Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology Zürich and at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is a member of
the editorial boards of the international journals Vehicle System Dynamics, the International Journal of
Railway Technology and the International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems.
Alessandro Ridolfi is currently an assistant professor within the Department of Industrial
Engineering (DIEF) at the University of Florence (UNIFI). He has also been an adjunct professor at
Syracuse University in Florence since 2015, teaching dynamics. He graduated in mechanical engineering
from UNIFI in 2010 and received his PhD degree in industrial engineering from UNIFI in
2014. At the beginning of his PhD, he worked on railway vehicle localisation and wheel-rail adhesion
modelling. His current research interests are underwater and industrial robotics, sensor-based
navigation of vehicles, vehicle dynamics and bio-robotics. He is co-author of more than 80 journal
and conference papers on vehicle dynamics, robotics and mechatronics topics.
Andrea Rindi received his PhD in 1999 from the University of Bologna, Italy. He is currently
associate professor in machine theory with the School of Engineering of the University of Florence.
He is cofounder and coordinator of the Laboratory of Mechatronics and Dynamic Modelling (MDM
Lab). His current research interests include vehicle dynamics, hardware in-the-loop (HIL) simulation
and automation in transport systems.
Ekaterina Rudakova is head of the Department of Integrated Studies of Track-Train Interaction
Dynamics at All-Union Research and Development Center for Transportation Technology
(St. Petersburg, Russia). She obtained her PhD in 2005 in railway rolling stock from Petersburg
State Transport University. The department carries out science-based research in the area of estimation
of rolling stock dynamic characteristics, track forces and dynamic loading of railcar elements.