The wear problem of wheel flange occurs at sharp curves of rail. This paper proposes a procedure for optimum design of a wheel profile wherein flange wear is reduced by improving an interaction between wheel and rail. Application of optimization method to design problem mainly depends on characteristics of design space. This paper compared local optimization method with global optimization according to sensitivity value of objective function for design variables to find out which optimization method is appropriable to minimize wear of wheel flange. Wheel profile is created by a piecewise cubic Hermite interpolating polynomial and dynamic performances are analyzed by a railway dynamic analysis program, VAMPIRE. From the optimization results, it is verified that the global optimization method such as genetic algorithm is more suitable to wheel profile optimization than the local optimization of SQP (Sequential Quadratic Programming) in case of considering the lack of empirical knowledge for initial design value.
