Abstract: The development of high-speed railway meets the increasing demand of transportation, while it brings wheel-rail profile wear problems. By using wear prediction model to predict wheel wear and the wheels can be repaired timely, which is significant for the safety of the train. A way to calculate friction work based on FEM has been proposed to predict wheel wear by establishing the wheel/rail three dimensional finite element contact model, and the point friction work equaled to the product of the relative displacement and the contact friction force. Through the contact calculation, it is found that the contact spot center had larger contact friction force, smaller relative displacement and smaller friction work. The wheel-tread friction work, which increased with the increase of the traction force, was superimposed by the friction work of the contact spot and it was small in the middle and large on the edge. Through the dynamic calculation, it is found that the wheel transversal conformed to the normal distribution approximately at the initial running stage of a straight rail. By the wheel wear prediction of a train, running with different mileage on the straight rail, it is found that the predicted profiles had the same wear trend as the measured profiles. The wheel had the most serious wear in the nominal rolling circle and its wear width was increasing with the increase of train mileage. It has certain research significance and practical value to predict wheel wear by calculating the friction work based on the FEM.