Contact force control of an active pantograph for high speed trains

Abstract

In this paper, a mathematical model of the pantograph with flexibility is developed based on experiments, and then an optimal controller together with a sliding observer is proposed to regulate the contact force in the presence of variation with respect to the equivalent stiffness of the catenary system. Furthermore, some physical interpretations of the closed-loop dynamics and pole-zero cancelations are given by analysis from a viewpoint of the output zeroing.