Abstract
The authors have been working on the development of an active control pantograph which aims to reduce the contact force fluctuation between catenaries and a pantograph in order to improve the current collection performance for a higher speed operation. The actuation force is given as a sinusoidal waveform whose frequency follows the target frequency defined as the ratio of the train speed divided by a span length. This means that the active control pantograph aims at the reduction of the contact force fluctuation at the target frequency. To this end, a control method including an automatic tuning algorithm for the amplitude and the phase of the actuation force has been developed. In this study, performance of the developed control method is evaluated by using the pantograph/catenary hybrid simulation system which is developed by the authors. The hybrid simulation system can simulate the conditions that the active control pantograph runs with varying the running speed or runs under the catenary whose span lengths are non-uniform. The results of the evaluation tests show that the active control pantograph with the developed control method properly works and results in more than 40% decrease in the contact force fluctuation around the target frequency domain under a speed varying condition and a non-uniform span length condition.
