Effect of Overhead Contact Line Pre-Sag on the Interaction Performance with a Pantograph in Electrified Railways

Guiming Mei and Yang Song
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Guiming Mei: State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China
Yang Song: Department of Structural Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-13

Abstract: In the high-speed rail industry, the overhead contact line erected along the railroad is used to supply the electricity to the high-speed train via a pantograph on the carbody’s roof. This work attempts to explore the effect of contact line pre-sag on the contact quality between the pantograph and the contact line. A nonlinear finite element approach is implemented to build the overhead contact line system with accurate description of the pre-sag of the contact line. Through a nonlinear solution, the effect of contact line pre-sag on the contact force is analysed with different train speeds and tension classes. The analysis result indicates the feasibility of tuning the pre-sag to improve the interaction performance at a given speed and tension class. In the low-speed range, the change of pre-sag does not have a significant effect on the interaction performance. However, when the speed increases up to a certain value, the effect of pre-sag on the contact force is nonnegligible. The increase in tension can reduce the sensitivity of the interaction performance to the pre-sag. An optimisation procedure is implemented to obtain the optimal amount of pre-sag for different train speeds and tension classes. The results indicate a necessity to include a certain amount of contact line pre-sag to maintain an excellent interaction performance at high speed.

Keywords: overhead contact line; pantograph; pre-sag; current collection quality; railway (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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