Research on Characteristic of the Contact Resistance of Pantograph-Catenary under Load Fluctuation Condition

Abstract

Contact resistance is an important index to evaluate the stability and reliability of the current-carrying performance of pantograph-catenary system. The contact load is the tuning parameter of the pantograph-catenary system and its fluctuation property is the critical factor affecting contact resistance. Characteristics of contact load are investigated under various load fluctuation conditions based on the sliding electric contact testing machine. Firstly, the changing relation between sliding speed, contact current, fluctuation frequency, fluctuation magnitude and contact resistance is studied. Secondly, the prediction model between fluctuation load, contact current, sliding speed and contact resistance is established using ε-insensitive support vector machine (ε-SVM) and the hypothesis testing method is adopted to verify the effectiveness of the model. Finally, the visualization method is employed to analyze the distribution characteristics of the feasible region of the working conditions of velocity and current in two numerical examples where the assumed upper bound of the contact resistance is taken as the current collection constraint and the method has a guiding significance for design and optimization of pantograph.