Creep and wear study for contact wire of direct current catenary: comparison between Cu-ETP and CuAg0,1 contact wires

The increase of the speed and of the capacity in the railway operation requires an increase of the performances of both rolling stock and infrastructure. This paper is focused on the needed characteristics of a 3 kV d.c. catenary to assure a good quality of current collection, even in the condition where two pantographs are in contact, for speed greater than 200 km/h. The wear behaviour of both contact wire and contact strip is taken into account for the analysis of catenary performances. In particular, in this work, an experimental study in laboratory of the creep and wear behaviour for two different materials of contact wire (electrolytic copper Cu-ETP and copper-silver alloy CuAg0,1) is presented. The laboratory analyses have been used to obtain an heuristic model for the wear of contact wire that allows, in combination with a software for the study of the dynamical interaction between pantograph and catenary, to evaluate the wear for the two considered catenaries, providing a comparative evaluation of their performances.