ELECTROMECHANICAL INTERACTION BETWEEN CARBON BASED PANTOGRAPH STRIP AND COPPER CONTACT WIRE: A HEURISTIC WEAR MODEL

Main contributions to the wear in the sliding contact between pantograph's strip and catenary's wire can be classified as: i) mechanical contribution, due to friction, ii) electrical contribution, due to current flow at the contact and iii) electrical arcs contribution related to power dissipated during arc generation. In this work, a heuristic wear model for the contact wire, which accounts for the mentioned three main contributions to the wear, is presented. After a tuning phase with results obtained by an experimental campaign aimed at evaluating the wear for the couple “pure copper contact wire – Kasperovski contact strip”, the wear model is used in combination with a dynamical electromechanical model able to reproduce the electromechanical pantograph-catenary interaction.