Advanced Active Control of Contact Force between Pantograph and Catenary for High-Speed Trains

Abstract

This paper presents a method for suppressing the contact force fluctuation between pantograph and catenary for high-speed trains using pantographs equipped with two types of active control technology. One is PID active pantograph control, which utilizes the contact force as a feedback signal to the controller. The other is impedance control, which employs the frame displacement as a feedback signal. Impedance control outperforms PID control in terms of the reduction in contact force fluctuation due to lower noise contamination of the frame displacement signal compared with that of the contact force signal.