24. Development of a CPS contact wire for Shinkansen

Chromium-Zirconium copper alloy (precipitation-hardened copper alloy - PHC®) contact wire with high tensile strength and high conductivity has been introduced on recently opened projected Shinkansen lines since the Tohoku Shinkansen line extension (Hachinohe – ShinAomori section) entered into operation.
However, the casting and rolling processes for manufacturing PHC contact wires have to be carried out separately, so even the minimum batch quantity should be large.
As a result, this contact wire cannot be adapted to the demand from infrastructure managers that require only small amounts to meet their contact line replacement plan needs.

The newly developed Cobalt-Phosphorus copper alloy (CPS) contact wire offers the equivalent performance of PHC contact wire. This can be cast and rolled successively, resulting in ability to respond to small quantity of order. This feature of production procedure also contribute to reducing cost.

The CPS contact wire was tested not only to determine its mechanical and electrical characteristics, but also its wear and fatigue performance, to verify it possessed the equivalent or better characteristics than PHC contact wires (Figs. 1 and 2).
Pilot introduction of the CPS contact wire on both conventional and Shinkansen lines demonstrated that the new product posed no problem in the test use with measuring uplift and strain for 6 months after construction, confirmed that there were no problems in relation to current collection performance including fatigue (Fig. 3).
In addition, confirmation was obtained that this contact wire had higher resistance to wear than ordinary contact wire (Table 1).