Hybrid simulation testing of a pantograph-Catenary system using a dynamically substructured system framework and a MDOF catenary model

Abstract

This study proposes a hybrid simulation (HS) method for pantograph/catenary systems based on a dynamically substructured system (DSS) framework. In this method, the contact force between an actual pantograph and a hydraulic actuator is utilized to calculate the motion of the catenary in real-time, whilst the actuator is driven according to the calculated motion of the catenary. The advantage of the proposed method, when compared with commonly-used methods such as the inverse transfer function approach, is that DSS is better able to avoid instability that can be caused, for example, by pure delay characteristics in the actuator dynamics. The proposed method is also able to accurately represent dynamic interaction between the pantograph and the catenary. In this paper, the DSS methodology is introduced and then the proposed method is validated via simulation and experiment.