Diagnosis Method of Overhead Contact Line Stress Based on Contact Force of Pantograph

Abstract

The contact wire strain is one of the most important indices to evaluate the safety of current collection system in high-speed operations. The authors proposed a new method estimating the contact wire strain based on the measured contact force between pantograph and contact wire, and carried out running tests to verify the utility of the method at current-collection testing equipment. It has been confirmed that the estimated contact wire strain by the method is more accurate than the value derived by the conventional method, and consequent errors are less than approximately 15% in dynamic simulation results of catenary-pantograph system. As the result of running tests, the estimated strain was almost consistent with the measured one. It is highly likely to contribute to the improvement of the diagnosis techniques of overhead equipment.