Effect of Train Loading Fluctuation on the Damage of Rail Catenary Contact Conductor Wire
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Date
2021-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
With current rise of climate change worldwide, transport industry contributes up to 21% of the
world’s total Green House Gases (GHG). In addition to that developing cities are facing great
changes in urbanization, population growth and environmental concerns. In this case, railway
transportation is a top contender on land transport mode to achieve sustainable mobility in fast
growing cities. For railway operation, apart from wheel-rail contact, the catenary pantograph has
a very high initial investment cost as well as associated maintenance cost. It is important to monitor
the damage evolution of the catenary components for developing better maintenance strategies.
Embedding on the development of computer technologies, the current research applies numerical
analysis, 3D modelling and simulation approaches using commercialized software packages (e.g.
Abaqus, Matlab, solid works and python) and co-Simulation technics to investigate the effect of
train loading fluctuations on the damage of rail catenary contact conductor wire. With reference to
Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit Service (AA-LRTS), the power and current drawn by the running
train were calculated. Then the heat losses in the conductor wire were obtained with respect to
train location on the line. This procedure was followed by thermal analysis that allowed us to
obtain temperature rise in the conductor. The temperature results were used as the inputs in the
dynamic explicit finite element model of the coupled catenary and sliding pantograph. From the
finite element analysis, different quantities such as contact forces and pressures, temperature rise
because of friction between sliding parts, and deflections of conductor wire were obtained.
Increase in loads from empty to overload car resulted in increase of current drawn by 47% which
increases the temperature of the mating parts from 200C to 1000C that in-turn results in average
increase by 0.24% and 0.31% of the contact pressures and contact forces respectively. The latter
were the input parameters in Archard wear model for calculating wear depth and the volume of
material removed from the catenary contact conductor wire. It was observed that at different
scenarios of train passenger capacity of empty, half, full and overload capacities, a train
experiences an increase in energy consumption, which results in an average increase of 0.20% of
the contact wire wear depth and 0.29% of the total volume of the material removed.
Description
Keywords
Light Rail Transit, co-simulation, pantograph, catenary system, contact pressures, Archard wear model