Rail corrugation is periodic and non-uniform wear on the rail running surface along the longitudinal direction. It results in vibration and noise, component loosening, detachment and fatigue failure, posing a threat to operation safety and deteriorating the riding experience. It is an important way to solve corrugation by revealing the causes and affecting factors of rail corrugation to propose measures against rail corrugation at the source. The existing theories used to study the corrugation can be divided into two categories of feedback vibration and self-excited vibration. The unstable vibration of the wheel-rail system is accepted as main cause of the corrugation on minor diameter curved rails. However, the rail corrugation modeling established on the basis of friction-induced vibration theory hardly accounts for the fastener clip, which may affect the prediction results. The effect of the fastener clip on rail corrugation is not be considered by the traditional corrugation model.