Effect of Train Energy Consumption on the Wear of Railroad Catenary Contact Conductor

With current rise of climate change worldwide, transport industry contributes up to 21% of the world’s total Green House Gases (GHG). In addition to that developing cities are facing great changes in urbanization, population growth and environmental concerns. In these instances, railway transportation is a top contender on land transport mode to achieve sustainable mobility in fast growing cities. For railway operation, apart from wheel-rail contact, the catenary system has a very high initial investment cost as well as associated maintenance cost. It is important to monitor the damage evolution of the catenary components for developing better maintenance strategies. This study utilizes a co-simulation between the railway catenary system dynamics and electrical power flow. With reference to Addis Ababa Light Rail Transit Service (AALRTS), the power and current drawn by the running train were calculated. Then the heat losses in the conductor wire were obtained with respect to train location on the line. This procedure was followed by thermal analysis that allowed us to obtain temperature rise in the conductor. The temperature results were used as some of the inputs in the dynamic explicit finite element model of the coupled catenary and sliding pantograph. From the finite element analysis, different quantities such as contact forces and pressures, temperature rise because of friction between sliding parts, and deflections of conductor were obtained. Furthermore, the fluctuations of train loads were taken into consideration in the calculation of power consumption and hence in temperature rise. Increase in loads resulted in increase of current drawn which increases the temperature of the mating parts, which in-turn affected frictional stresses and forces. The latter were the input parameters in Archard wear model for calculating wear volume from the catenary contact conductor. It was observed that at different scenarios of train passenger loadings, the train experiences an increase in energy consumption, which results in slight increase of contact conductor wear by material removal.