Atmospheric Ice Accretion on Railway Overhead Powerline Conductors- A Numerical Case Study

Ice accretion on railway overhead contact wires/conductors can cause various critical operational and safety issues such as overloading, arc formation, mass imbalance, and wire galloping. The focus of this multiphase numerical study is to understand and analyze the ice accretion physics on railway overhead powerline conductors at various operating conditions. In this regard, two different geometric shape conductors of 12 mm diameter, 1) a grooved shape contact wire (like an actual railway conductor); 2) a standard circular shape contact wire are used. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based numerical simulations are carried out for both geometric configurations at different operating parameters such as wind speed, Liquid Water Content (LWC), cloud droplet size distribution, Median Volume Diameter (MVD), and atmospheric temperature. Analysis shows that variation in the operating weather parameters for both geometric configurations considerably affects the ice accretion, both in terms of accreted ice thickness and mass.