Development and Experimental Validation of a Physics-Based Digital Twin for Railway Freight Wagon Monitoring

The development of digital twins for railway freight vehicles represents a key step toward more efficient, data-driven maintenance and safety assessment. This study focuses on the creation of a digital twin of the T3000 articulated freight wagon, one of the most widespread intermodal transport solutions in Europe. Despite its relevance, the dynamic behavior of this vehicle type has been scarcely investigated so far in scientific literature. A dedicated onboard measurement layout was defined to enable comprehensive monitoring of vehicle dynamics and the interactions between adjacent wagons within the train. The experimental setup integrates inertial sensors and a 3D vision system, allowing for detailed analysis of both rigid-body and vibrational responses under real operating conditions. A high-fidelity multibody model of the articulated wagon was developed and tuned using the acquired data, achieving optimal agreement with experimental measurements in both straight and curved track segments. The resulting model constitutes a reliable and scalable digital twin of the T3000 wagon, suitable for predictive simulations and virtual testing. Future developments will focus on a deeper investigation of the buffer interaction through an additional experimental campaign, further extending the digital twin’s capability to represent the full dynamic behavior of articulated freight trains.