Developing pantograph-catenary contact and predicting fatiguefailure of contact wire of railways
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Date
2014-08
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Fatigue Failure, Pantograph-Catenary, Contact Wire, Railway