Development Of A Portable Pantograph Detector

Abstract:The current collection of pantograph directly affects the operation quality of electric locomotive, so the pantograph detection is of great significance. In the present market, most pantograph detection instruments must work on ground, which are of bulk size and must be removed when detected. Therefore, a portable pantograph detector is proposed in this thesis, with smaller size and easier operability. When the pantograph is detected, the only thing to do is to put the detector on the head of the vehicle, and the detecting can be accomplished without the pantograph removed.When working, firstly the lifting up and down of the pantograph is implemented by the wire rope which is connected to the pantograph head and driven by the stepping motor. And simultaneously the contacting pressure correspond to certain height is sampled by the sensors. After that, the detection data is transmitted to the upper computer via Bluetooth communication. Finally, the static characteristic curve is plotted on the upper computer according to the height and pressure data. The plotted curve provides maintenance reference for field personnel.The main design includes mechanical structure and control circuit, Bluetooth communication and software platform. Stepping motor works as the core component of mechanical structure, and the control circuit is based on LPC2294 MCU which accomplishes the motor control, A/D conversion and serial communication. Bluetooth virtual serial communication discarding the cables provides a contactless detecting scheme.Design of software is the major task in this thesis, and there are two sets of programs designed corresponding to different application, one for PC machine while the other for PDA. Either solution provides brief human-machine interface, and finishes sending motor command, receiving and managing the detecting data and real-time plotting of pantograph static characteristic curve. Each program module is analyzed in detail and the key points in program design are emphasized.In the end, the detecting data is analyzed considering the actual static characteristic data and the feature itself of pantograph in experiments. Besides, improvement for future work is also proposed in this thesis.