Browsing by Author "Andinet, Zereabruk"
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Item Developing pantograph-catenary contact and predicting fatiguefailure of contact wire of railways(Addis Ababa University, 2014-08) Andinet, Zereabruk; Daniel, Tilahun (PhD)Railway overhead systems (catenary–pantograph) are subjected to cyclic load (fatigue) while delivering electrical energy to train’s electrical motors. The catenary–pantograph system mainly consists of a messenger wire, contact wire and a pantograph. Contact between the pantograph’s head and contact wire is vital for the train to operate smoothly. Too much or too little contact leads to increased wear in the system. This cyclic load leads to fatigue wear of over head contact wire and then unexpectedly without any indication the system will fail. Hence, this thesis paper addresses the problem by developing the contact between the pantograph-catenary and then predicts the fatigue life of the contact wire. This ensures the reliability of the railway system, control their maintenance periods and the quality of the current collection will increase as the loss of contact is maintained. The methods used in this thesis are analytical system and predicting the fatigue life via ANSYS soft ware and comparing the results with experimental results carried out. The application area is in electrical driven railways via pantograph-catenary system like Ethiopian Rail way Corporation which uses light rail way in Addis Ababa city and Ethio-djibouti rail way. Thus, as results show in this thesis, it is possible to maximize the life span of the contact wire by applying preventive and proactive maintenance, minimize maintenance cost, down time of trains and increase the satisfaction of customers.