Investigation on the Applicability of Pantograph and Catenary Model Urban Railway System

In order to analyze the applicability of pantographs and catneary models to the urban railway system, the pantograph was modeled as a lumped parameter system with two or three degrees of freedom and a multi-rigid model, while the rigid catenary was simplified as a beam model and a spring model with different stiffnesses. Combining different pantographs and catenary models, the dynamics simulation of the coupled system model was conducted to obtain the dynamic performance of the pantograph-catenary system. The results show that at low speeds, different catenary models with the same pantograph show a little difference in current collection, and the standard deviation of contact force is less than 10 N. With the increase of speed, the difference of models become evident, and the standard deviation of contact force varies beyond 80 N. When the natural frequency and mode shape of pantograph and catenary that match the span-pass frequency exhibit a discrepancy between different models, there appears a critical speed where current collection performance of models changes dramatically. By comparing the simulation and experimental results, it is indicated that the three-lumped-mass model of pantograph is more applicable than the other kinds of models, because it takes into account the elasticity of pantograph upper frame.