Electro-mechanical contact between pantograph strip and catenary contact wire: laboratory tests and wear model

Main topics of this paper are the results obtained by a laboratory experimental campaign carried out to evaluate the electromechanical wear for the couple Cu-ETP contact wire – “Kasperovski” contact strip, where the carbon is encased in copper on three sides. In order to evaluate the evolution of the wear for the contact wire, a heuristic model is developed considering three main interacting contributions to wear in the case of pantograph-catenary interaction: i) the mechanical contribution, due to the friction; ii) the electrical contribution, due to power dissipation related to the Joule effect; iii) the electrical arcs contribution, due to the power dissipation generated by the electrical arcs that occur when the contact dynamics causes a contact loss.