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Dynamic Simulation of the Pantograph/Catenary Interaction

Consulting

The ageing of the various components of the catenary is a major concern for maintenance. Being able to simulate the pantograph/catenary interactions provides useful information to analyze perturbed situations in the catenary : defects, singularities, extreme climatic conditions. It also helps to optimize existing catenaries and to design the future ones.

The OSCAR software, developped in collaboration with SNCF, is a portable multi-platform simulation package that is certified against TSI and can be used for pantograph/catenary interaction studies. The main features are

• 3D geometry modeling with full generality (allows detailed modeling of defects, ...).
• Unilateral contact between catenary and possibly non-linear spring/mass models of the pantograph. Extension for cosimulation with MSC-ADAMS.
• Test verified for many catenaries in Europe.
• Automated generation of design studies with distribution of computations and merging of results.
• Typical run times in minutes.

French high speed line, TGV

OSCAR has been used extensively for design and consulting activities by SNCF. For a possible distribution to other partners, please contact SDTools.

Results : Finite Element Model and measured/computed contact force SDT was used to develop the application. The SDT Runtime feature was used to generate a deployable application that runs independently from MATLAB. For more information on these extensions contact info@sdtools.com.