High-speed railway pantograph and catenary dynamic simulation system modelling and verification

The dynamic simulation system of a pantograph and a catenary has been built by using the finite element method, in which the pantograph is equivalent to a threemass-damper-stiffness system and the catenary contains only cable and beam elements. Considering droppers as nonlinear elements only stressed by tension, a sliding contact model of the pantograph and catenary is coupled by penalty function. Nodal displacement and element stress can be obtained by direct time integration. Finally, the contact force and deformation of the pantograph and catenary is achieved by entering the parameters in standards and from the actual Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway into this simulation system. When comparing the standards, commercial software and measured data, the credibility of the simulation system can be verified. This simulation system provides an efficient way for the design and structure optimization of a pantograph and catenary system.