Heat Modeling of the Catenary’s Contact Wire During the Electrical Power Supply of Trains in Station

The overheating problem of the railroad catenary at the contact with the pantograph when the train is stopped and electrically fed is responsible of many incidents. This paper describes an experimental study and a numerical model of a catenary/pantograph system used during the preconditioning of the train. Several incidents of wire breakage have highlighted the importance of the catenary/pantograph heating problem, in those incidents the contact wire had melted and broke itself. The experimental setups consists of estimating the contact’s thermal resistance and area in order to calculate which part of the interface heat flux go throught the catenary’s contact wire and which part go throught the pantograph’s collector strip. The numerical model is based on several phenomena as heat conduction into the wires, heat exchange with ambiance through convection, Joule effects and heat flux from the interface.