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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 110
PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE
Edited by: J. Pombo
Paper 115

Numerical Analysis of Pantograph-Catenary Arcing of a High-Speed Train

G. Zhu, G. Gao, G. Wu and W. Wei

School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
G. Zhu, G. Gao, G. Wu, W. Wei, "Numerical Analysis of Pantograph-Catenary Arcing of a High-Speed Train", in J. Pombo, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 115, 2016. doi:10.4203/ccp.110.115
Keywords: high-speed train, pantograph-catenary arcing, electric ablation, catenary wire, pantograph strip, numerical analysis, temperature distribution, Fluent.

Summary
The pantograph-catenary arcing phenomena occurs during the off-line process of the pantograph-catenary system. When arcing occurs, the temperature of arc plasma is very high. In addition, thermal conduction from arc plasma to catenary wire and pantograph strip will shorten their lifespan. Due to the limit of experiments, it is really hard to test the temperature distribution of arc plasma. In this paper, a physical model of pantograph-catenary arcing has been built. By using fluid analysis software, those functions were solved. By changing the radius of catenary wire, the temperature distribution of the catenary wire at 3.5mm, 7.2mm and 15mm have been established. It is shown that with the increasing of catenary wire radius, the electrical ablation of it can be reduced to a certain degree. In addition, the temperature distribution of the pantograph strip for different thermal conductivities of material has also been established. It shown that when that thermal conductivity increased from 6W/(m.K) to 100W/(m.K), the highest temperature of pantograph strip will be reduced from 8800K to 3600K, and the high-temperature area diameter will be reduced from 8mm to 3.1mm, which means that the electrical ablation of the pantograph strip is reduced.

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