Adrien Bobillot

Pantograph-Catenary Dynamics Simulation

This paper presents research activities carried out in the field of pantograph–catenary dynamics simulation. Lump mass models are used to represent the pantograph and two levels of modelling are used to represent the catenary. The first level consists of a mono-dimensional analytical model which uses displacement decomposition in sine series. This method being continuous (as sine series are), it is very useful to validate results from finite-element simulations and to test some fundamental mechanical hypotheses. The second level consists of a three-dimensional finite-element model which will be used by overhead line designers. Defects and singularities can be included in the models to compare the obtained results with measurement data, with the goal of locating and identifying defects in the catenary using an instrumented pantograph. Before working on complex overhead line geometries, the relevance of some hypotheses was assessed on a simply supported tensioned beam, and the correlation of both models was verified.

Robust Methods for Detecting Defects in Overhead Contact Line Based on Simulation Results

Today, catenary incidents represent one of the principal causes of disturbance of railway traffic: throughout Europe, more than one million minutes of delay are due to overhead line incidents. In a near future, SNCF as a high-speed train operator, targets commercial speed up to 350 Km/h. The question of current collection thus requires a thorough study of the overhead line design and an evolution of the existing infrastructure maintenance strategies.