Numerical Simulation of Arc Temperature Distribution Considering Crosswinds between Contact Wire and Contact Strip in Electric Railway

Electric railway is supplied from a contact wire through a contact strip. When the contact of wire and strip is poor, the arc generates, then the contact wire is sometimes damaged and disconnected. In this case, the train service suspended for over half a day because of the disconnection of contact wire. Thus, it is required to elucidate the disconnection condition of the contact wire in order to suppress the out of service. A few papers have researched that the arc figure is being measured when the running of the train is simulated by moving the contact wire in parallel, experimentally. The arc appearance is sometimes stagnation, moving, and restrike when the train runs. These phenomena depended on train and crosswind speed. In this time, the temperature distribution of arc and contact wire are important to suppress the contact wire disconnection. However, the arc generation is very fast phenomenon, and the measurement of contact wire temperature is very difficult. Therefore, the simulation method that regards the running the electric railways as crosswinds should be developed. In this research, the temperature distributions of the arc and the contact wire were calculated by the numerical simulation in the case of the small crosswind, the arc stagnation on the contact wire and the high crosswind. As a result, the arc was deflected by the crosswind, and the restrike phenomenon sometimes occurred. Therefore, it is considered that the contact wire is disconnected because of arc stagnation on it when the crosswind is low which means the train runs slowly.