The work presented in this paper was led within the collaborative project "Euraxles" of the FP7 program of the European Commission. It aimed at developing processes and methods that contribute to the minimization of the risk of fatigue failure of railway axles in service. This paper focuses on the development of a method to assess the reliability of axles according to fatigue damage. The proposed approach is mainly based on the stress strength interference analysis (SSIA) and the fatigue-equivalent-load (FEL) methods. It aims at calculating the axles' probability of fatigue failure, by characterizing the variability of real in-service loads and the scatter of the axles fatigue strength, and at evaluating more accurately the actual design margins. First of all, the main lines of the stress strength interference analysis method are recalled. This method aims at evaluating the in-service reliability of components for their design or their homologation. It is used in many industries for various applications (mechanical components or systems, electronic elements, etc.). In the second part, the fatigue load analysis method that is proposed for railway axles is described. It starts with a post-processing of an axle load measurement: from a time signal of forces applied to both wheels fitted on the axle, fatigue cycles of bending moment applied to the axle are identified and transformed into a cyclic equivalent load, the Meq, which is a measurement of the severity of the initial variable load. Then, virtual but realistic load spectra are generated, thanks to a classification operation followed by a random draw of elementary load data that considers the operation and maintenance conditions of the axle. All the spectra are then analysed thanks to the fatigue-equivalent-load method in order to build the distribution of in-service load severities that gives a picture of the stress to which the axles are submitted. In the third and last part of the paper, the methods are applied to real data of "Societe nationale des chemins de ferfrancais" (SNCF), the French national railway operator. Sensitivity analyses are performed in order to quantify the effect on the Meq of variations of parameters and to verify the convergence and robustness of the process. Finally, results obtained for a passenger coach are given. The comparison between the distribution of load severities and the normative load, defined as according to european standards EN13103, shows that, for the studied axle, the normative load is very conservative. Using the axles fatigue limits identified on full-scale tests, a stress strength interference analysis is performed to calculate the probability of failure of the axle.
