Keywords: pantograph-catenary interaction, contact wire wear model, contact strip wear model, wear prediction.

Electric railways are nowadays the state-of-the-art for what concern the design of high-speed lines. The research on this particular segment of railways is focused on the pantograph-catenary interaction because this is what limits the maximum allowed speed. Within this field of research, the topic of the wear of the components involved in the sliding contact attracted the attention of rail operators, due to the possibility of reducing costs and failures once this phenomenon is better understood. Multiple studies investigated the effects on the wear of materials, current intensity, train speed, contact force, arcs and heat generated at the contact surface. All these studies pointed out interesting characteristics of this phenomenon, namely its high dependency on operational parameters and the benefits of having results from laboratory tests, given the inherent difficulty on retrieve enough reliable data from field measurements.

In this work, results from dedicated laboratory tests at Politecnico di Milano are used to create a model for the contact wire wear and a model for the contact strip wear. The two models are representative of the conditions currently in use within the Norwegian Railway Network. Furthermore, the laboratory tests allowed to explore parameter values that might be used for future applications. Further test with more extreme values allowed to extend the validity of the study beyond the needed range, so to have a robust prediction on the created models. The models were generated by fitting an equation that includes the main contributions to the wear (mechanical, electrical, arcs) to the test results. Considerations regarding the area of influence of each contribution are also possible. This allows to understand, given the operating conditions, which kind of wear to expect. Furthermore, the models can be used to estimate the wear both on new lines, integrating it with the simulation tool used for the study of the catenary dynamics, and on existing lines, applying the contact force and electric current intensity data recorded from the field measurements.

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