A spatial coupling model to study dynamic performance of pantograph-catenary with vehicle-track excitation

In high-speed rail operations, contact wire irregularity (CWI) in a catenary is a common disturbance to the pantograph–catenary interaction performance, which directly affects the quality of current collection. To describe the pointwise stochastics of CWI, the power spectral density (PSD) function for CWI is proposed, and its effect on the pantograph–catenary interaction is investigated. First, a preprocessing procedure is proposed to eliminate the redundant information in the measured irregularities based on the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). Then, the upper envelope of the irregularity, which contains all the information regarding the dropper positions on the contact wire, is extracted. A form of the PSD function is suggested for contact wire irregularities. A methodology is proposed to include the effect of random irregularities in the assessment of the interaction performance of a pantograph–catenary. A developed target configuration under dead load (TCUD) method is used to calculate the initial configuration of the catenary, in which the dropper points on the contact wire are placed on their exact positions. Finally, the effect of the random contact wire irregularities on the contact force is investigated through 500 numerical simulations at each operating speed. The present results indicate that random irregularities have a direct impact on the pantograph–catenary contact, including an increment in the dispersion of the contact force statistics. The stochastic analysis shows that over 70% of the results with irregularities are worse than the ideal result without irregularities.

Contact Wire Irregularity Stochastics and Effect on High-Speed Railway Pantograph–Catenary Interactions

The periodical maintenance of railway systems is very important in terms of maintaining safe and comfortable transportation. In particular, the monitoring and diagnosis of faults in the pantograph catenary system are required to provide a transmission from the catenary line to the electric energy locomotive. Surface wear that is caused by the interaction between the pantograph and catenary and nonuniform distribution on the surface of a pantograph of the contact points can cause serious accidents. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for image processing-based monitoring and fault diagnosis in terms of the interaction and contact points between the pantograph and catenary in a moving train. For this purpose, the proposed method consists of two stages. In the first stage, the pantograph catenary interaction has been modeled; the simulation results were given a failure analysis with a variety of scenarios. In the second stage, the contact points between the pantograph and catenary were detected and implemented in real time with image processing algorithms using actual video images. The pantograph surface for a fault analysis was divided into three regions: safe, dangerous, and fault. The fault analysis of the system was presented using the number of contact points in each region. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness, applicability, and performance of the proposed approach.

A New Experimental Approach Using Image Processing-Based Tracking for an Efficient Fault Diagnosis in Pantograph–Catenary Systems

The wind-induced vibration of the high-speed catenary and the dynamic behaviour of the pantograph–catenary under stochastic wind field are firstly analysed. The catenary model is established based on nonlinear cable and truss elements, which can fully describe the nonlinearity of each wire and the initial configuration. The model of the aerodynamic forces acting on the messenger/contact wire is deduced by considering the effect of the vertical and horizontal fluctuating winds. The vertical and horizontal fluctuating winds are simulated by employing the Davenport and Panofsky spectrums, respectively. The aerodynamic coefficients of the contact/messenger wire are calculated through computational fluid dynamics. The wind-induced vibration response of catenary is analysed with different wind speeds and angles. Its frequency-domain characteristics are discussed using Auto Regression model. Finally, a pantograph model is introduced and the contact force of the pantograph–catenary under stochastic wind i...

Nonlinear analysis of wind-induced vibration of high-speed railway catenary and its influence on pantograph–catenary interaction

Active control of contact force for high-speed railway pantograph-catenary based on multi-body pantograph model

Due to the intrinsic nonlinear characteristics and complex structure of the high-speed catenary system, a modelling method is proposed based on the analytical expressions of nonlinear cable and truss elements. The calculation procedure for solving the initial equilibrium state is proposed based on the Newton–Raphson iteration method. The deformed configuration of the catenary system as well as the initial length of each wire can be calculated. Its accuracy and validity of computing the initial equilibrium state are verified by comparison with the separate model method, absolute nodal coordinate formulation and other methods in the previous literatures. Then, the proposed model is combined with a lumped pantograph model and a dynamic simulation procedure is proposed. The accuracy is guaranteed by the multiple iterative calculations in each time step. The dynamic performance of the proposed model is validated by comparison with EN 50318, the results of the finite element method software and SIEMENS simulati...

Nonlinear modelling of high-speed catenary based on analytical expressions of cable and truss elements

As for the rapid expansion of high-speed electrified railway industry, the current collection quality of electric locomotives becomes one of the crucial technical issues for the stable operation of trains. The key measurement index that can characterize the quality of current collection is the contact force between the catenary and pantograph on the locomotive roof. One of the major factors that affect the contact force is the contact wire irregularity, which appears to be very difficult to be measured or detected at present. In recent years, the frequency-domain indicators of the pantograph–catenary contact force (PCCF) have been gaining importance to address this issue. In this paper, a recent quadratic time–frequency distribution is selected to describe the time–frequency representation (TFR) of PCCF signal based on its nonstationarity. The Zhao–Atlas–Marks distribution (ZAMD) shows high time–frequency resolution and cross-term suppression for PCCF signals. To investigate the deterioration of the PCCF under contact wire irregularity, a pantograph–catenary interaction model is presented and verified. Some synthetic contact wire irregularities are generated and added to the interaction model. Based on the characteristics of quadratic TFRs of PCCF signals, a detection and localization approach for contact wire irregularity is proposed in this paper. The simulation and real-life experimental results indicate that the different forms of contact wire irregularity could be effectively detected and localized with meter accuracy using the ZAMD.

Xiaobing Lu

Papers

Nonlinear analysis of wind-induced vibration of high-speed railway catenary and its influence on pantograph–catenary interaction

Active control of contact force for high-speed railway pantograph-catenary based on multi-body pantograph model

Nonlinear modelling of high-speed catenary based on analytical expressions of cable and truss elements

Detection of Contact Wire Irregularities Using a Quadratic Time–Frequency Representation of the Pantograph–Catenary Contact Force

Wave propagation analysis in high-speed railway catenary system subjected to a moving pantograph