Assessing Aerodynamic Effects on a Railway Pantograph by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics

This paper investigates the aerodynamic forces acting on a railway pantograph, and their influence of the contact force. The analysis is carried out both by means of wind tunnel and on-track experimental tests, and by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The CFD model is fully validated, both in wind tunnel and on-track scenarios, through the experimental results. The focus is initially drawn on the effects of stationary forces on the mean contact force, strongly affecting the pantograph performance and depending on pantograph orientation. As a second step, the effects of non-stationary forces on the variability of contact force and contact losses are analysed. Two phenomena are considered: the influence of aerodynamics in the 0-20 Hz range, normally used for the assessment of the quality of current collection, and the excitation of pantograph collectors at higher frequencies (70-300 Hz) related to vortex shedding.