Computer Evaluation of Overhead Equipment for Electric Railroad Traction

The mathematical models and associated computer programs for analyzing a number of designs of overhead equipment such as simple catenary, compound catenary, stitched catenary, tunel equipment, and single-wire system, together with many possible variations are described. The programs are able to deal with up to four pantographs, and the initial conditions assumed are that the wires have their static equilibrium configurations and that the front pantograph is at the beginning of the first span touching the contact wire (or trolley wire) and moving tangentially to it. Any subsequent pantographs reach the beginning of the equipment after the start of the run and are then dealt with appropriately. The output of the programs list the input data, the total percentage contact loss between the panhead and contact wire in each span and the pantograph heights and contact forces at appropriate intervals of time. Graph plots of the pantograph heights and contact forces are also produced. The results of these programs are shown to give satisfactory agreement with previously published results obtained on a scaled model.