Simulation of the contact wire wear evolution in high speed overhead contact lines

Overhead contact line or catenary is the structure composed of support elements and wires responsible for the power supply of the locomotive through sliding contact with the pantograph. This contact causes wear not only on the pantograph contact strips but also in the contact wire, which produces a reduction on its effective section and eventually its replacement, resulting in the stop of the railway traffic with its associate economical and operational drawbacks. For this reason, it is important for catenary designers to count with appropriate tools able to predict the contact wire wear behaviour for extending the service life of the system. This work proposes a strategy to simulate the long-term contact wire wear evolution considering the mutual influence between the dynamic behaviour and wear of the system. The method is based on two pillars: the efficient simulation of the catenary-pantograph dynamic interaction [1] and a heuristic wear model [2] which considers mechanical wear due to friction and electrical wear produced by Joule effect and electric arcs. With the proposed simulation tool, we analyse the effect on the long-term contact wire height irregularity caused by wear of different parameters such as the train speed, the pantograph uplift force or the presence of installation errors in the catenary.