Effects of Contact Strips Wear on Service Performance of Pantograph System

To realize the parametric description of contact strips wear surface and evaluate the influence of contact strips wear on the service performance of pantograph systems, the effects of contact strips wear on the dynamic and fatigue performance on the pantograph-catenary system were investigated.. Firstly, based on a large amount of measured data of contact strips surface, the quadratic equation was proposed to fit the contact strips surface. Two characteristic quantities were defined, i.e., the surface shape parameter and wear depth, and the rule of characteristic quantities varying with time was obtained. Secondly, the mode superposition method was adopted to build a dynamic pantograph-catenary coupled system model, which takes into account the wear characteristics of contact strips. Based on the model, the effects of contact strips wear on the current collection performance of the coupled system were explored. Finally, a fatigue life prediction model considering the time-varying characteristics of contact strips surface wear was built. The effects of the wear on the fatigue performance of pantograph were analyzed. Results indicate that the wear surface of contact strips enhanced the periodic frequency with wave length of span increasing the amplitude of the dominant frequency. The larger the absolute value of surface shape parameter, the poorer the dynamic performance of the pantograph-catenary coupled system. When considering the contact strips surface wear, the predicted fatigue life of pantograph frame parts was reduced by about 30%-40%, and the upper structure was affected more greatly.