For railroads and trains, there have been many incidents involving catenary overheating at the contact with the pantograph when a train is supplied with power while standing still. The overheating of the catenary-pantograph interface can sometimes cause the contact wire to break. In order to anticipate the occurrence of such costly problems, the FEMTO-ST Institute has carried out theoretical and experimental studies in collaboration with the French National Railway Company (SNCF) to better understand this phenomenon. First, a 2D transient electrical model was developed for the contact wire. This allows the current distribution in the wire to be estimated to obtain an accurate measure of the internal heat generation. The heat produced by the interface was considered and split between the catenary and pantograph with an analytical model. Finally, the heat transfer equation for the wire under particular boundary conditions was solved for the entire finite difference network based on Euler's implicit method. The transient modelling results of the wire heating were compared with earlier experimental values, and a parametric study was performed.
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