Unsteady aerodynamic forces on a railway pantograph and their influence on pantograph-catenary dynamic interaction

Pantograph and overhead line aerodynamics is responsible for affecting the con-tact force between the pantograph and the contact wire, both in terms of average value and dy-namic variation. Stationary forces acting on pantograph components can change the average value of the contact force, whereas aerodynamic non-stationary phenomena influence the per-formance of railway pantograph in terms of dynamic variation of the contact force. This paper is a first attempt of numerical evaluation of the dynamic effects introduced by unsteady aerody-namic forces on the pantograph-catenary dynamic interaction.