Keywords: electric railways, overhead catenary system, current collection, contact loss, current capacity.

Compound catenary systems on Shinkansen lines have just entered a period where they have to be replaced on a large-scale. To facilitate renewal and reduce maintenance costs, it is efficient to replace compound catenary systems with simple catenary systems when renewing compound catenary systems. Pantographs, which used to have a maximum of eight per trainset, is now a maximum of four, typically one or two. New type of simple catenary system was developed and was being installed on Tokaido Shinkansen line where the maximum operating speed was less than 300 km/h. Moreover, the Shinkansen lines over 300 km/h are in the direction of renewing to install simple catenary systems. However, comparing with compound catenary systems, simple catenary systems tend to cause large vertical oscillations of the pantograph in the intervals between support points. When thick wires are used to ensure current capacity, fluctuations in the contact force between the contact wire and the pantograph due to the dropper intervals tend to be large: the resulting increase in contact force fluctuations due to this, is a problem for high-speed operations. This study explores new types of simple catenary systems developed for running speeds of about 320 km/h, which is the current maximum Shinkansen commercial operating speed. In addition, a simple catenary system for operation up to 360 km/h is also being developed.

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