Abstract
In an attempt to quantify the amount of the dynamic reaction in a railway catenary system due to the dynamic action created by the interaction with the pantograph of the train, a catenary dynamic index (CDI) is developed. The index is intended for comparing structural dynamic responses in different situations. Comparisons between positions in a catenary to evaluate the design or comparisons between passages to evaluate train passages and automatically tell if a pantograph is faulty. This index can be a helpful tool for infrastructure managers, designers and academics to evaluate both measured and simulated data as well as controlling trains in the rail network. The CDI is computed for a given position on the catenary using the response before and after train passage. This involves both the pre-passage interaction dominated phase and the catenary free vibration phase of the catenary response. This approach is significantly different from using the pantograph contact forces since the contact forces only gives one value per contact point, while the index describes a single point over a period of time, both along the wire. More important, this method can assess a great variety of train passages, in stark contrast to the contact force measurements, which describes the behaviour often from one single control train with very limited number of passages a year (in Norway no more than two times). Therefore, the CDI quantitatively describes the energy content in a railway catenary for a whole train passage. This paper presents the method and results when using the CDI on field measurements. The results show that the catenary dynamic index can describe important variations the dynamic response of a catenary system and that it changes with changing boundary conditions. During a short monitoring period the method identified successfully two real outliers, important for the infrastructure owner, and showing a suitability for structural health monitoring.
Highlights
The quantification of the amount of vibration in civil engineering structures makes it possible to compare the dynamic response in structures of the same type with different outlines
Measurements from the pantograph are natural to use since they evaluate the direct pantograph-catenary interaction, which is important for the interaction quality, the dynamic response, the contact strip wear and the power supply
This paper has presented an index that describes the amount of dynamic behaviour for a point on a railway catenary section under train passage
Summary
The quantification of the amount of vibration in civil engineering structures makes it possible to compare the dynamic response in structures of the same type with different outlines. Measurements from the pantograph are natural to use since they evaluate the direct pantograph-catenary interaction, which is important for the interaction quality, the dynamic response, the contact strip wear and the power supply. These studies are limited to the contact point moving along the catenary. After an extensive study of field measurements of both contact forces from the pantograph and accelerations from the catenary, it is identified a need to quantify the pointwise dynamic response in the catenary itself. For infrastructure owners, a CDI basis can be made for a particular catenary system, and it will be easy to determine if a train passage is operating outside of normal operating behaviour or if a structural monitoring system is up and running
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