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Urban rail transit usually contains many small radius curved tracks, and wheel flange wear is prominent, which greatly reduces the service life and increases the maintenance and replacement costs of wheelsets. Two metro lines in Shanghai of China had suffered from severe flange wear since 2017, and the flange wear rate increased gradually over the next three years. This paper presents the understanding and treatment of severe flange wear through field measurement and numerical simulation. The investigation results indicated that the key factors causing severe flange wear were poor rail gauge face lubrication, the use of a low conicity wheel profile for trains running on the two metro lines containing many small radius curved tracks, and the lack of timely maintenance of low rail profiles. Three countermeasures were proposed to mitigate wheel flange wear, which were evaluated through wheel–rail matching analysis and wheel wear prediction. Then, two countermeasures, i.e. improving rail gauge face lubrication and employing the LM-30 wheel profile, were verified through field tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]