Experimental Study On Arc Striking And Extinguishing Distances And Erosion Wear Of A Pantograph-Catenary System

With the rapid development of electrified railways, as a main current-receiving mode from the catenary to pantograph, sliding electric contact has played an extremely important role in electrified railways. Sliding electric contact has an important effect on the current-receiving quality of the pantograph-catenary system, which affects regular operation of the high-speed trains. Off-line arcing is a main factor affecting the current-receiving quality of the pantograph-catenary system. So it is very significant to study the pantograph-catenary arcing.In the thesis, a special test apparatus was developed to experimentally study a process of off-line of a pantograph-catenary system. The electrical characteristics of the pantograph-catenary arcing and the striking and extinguishing distances of the pantograph-catenary arcing were studied experimentally on the new test apparatus. In addition, a new method for measuring on-line the arc striking and extinguishing distances was proposed. The effects of electric current and voltage on the arc striking and extinguishing distances and erosion wear loss of the contact strip wear studied. By analyzing the test results, the main conclusions are obtained as follows:(1) When the electric voltage of pantograph-catenary is 36V AC and the electric current is 70A, the arc striking distance is found to be 153.2μm, and the extinguishing distance is 1244.6p.m.(2) The arc striking and extinguishing distances increase with the increasing of the electric voltage, and the striking and extinguishing distances are approximately proportional to the electric voltage. But the current has a little impact on the striking and extinguishing distances. Generally, with the increase of current, the striking and extinguishing distances increase a little.(3) The arc erosion wear of the contact strip have a close correlation with arc energy. As the increase of arc energy, the level of arc erosion wear of the contact strip becomes more serious.(4) The thermal effect caused by pantograph-catenary leads to a serious material transfer of the pantograph-catenary system, and the material are transferred from the contact strip to the contact wire mainly. The higher of the voltage, the more serious the material transfer, which leads to a worse erosion of the contact strip. Comparing those in high voltage and low voltage, the differences of material transfer is quiet obvious.