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• The angular domain synchronous averaging (ADSA) method for wheel flat detection is proposed. • Simulation and experiment study on the effectiveness of the ADSA method. • This method can remove the interfering signals due to special track geometries or track defects. • This method can identify the position and the number of wheel flats. Wheel flats (WFs) can generate periodic impact forces and aggravate the wheel-rail interaction. Therefore, the early detection of WFs is significant for railway operators to lower the maintenance cost. In this work, the angular domain synchronous averaging (ADSA) method is employed to detect WFs on railway vehicles since it can handle the non-stationary vibration process of rotating machines by processing the vibration data in the angular domain. Furthermore, the short-time irregular impulses, such as those caused by crossings and rail joints, can be attenuated by using synchronous averaging technology. The periodic impact caused by WFs can be easily observed in the polar coordinate using the ADSA method, which is verified by one multibody system (MBS) simulation and one field experiment. Besides, the sensitivity of this method to various flat dimensions and multiple flats is also studied in the MBS simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]