NEWS
Improvement of Current Collection Test Equipment


Takefumi SHIMADA
Senior Researcher, Laboratory Head,
Contact Line Structures, Power Supply Technology Div.


    The Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI) has recently completed the remodeling of the current collection test equipment that is used for the tests and researches of the phenomenon of current collection between overhead contact line and pantograph. This equipment is to run an actual pantograph mounted on a truck along the 500 m-long test line to reach the speed of 200 km/h by using a DC linear motor developed by RTRI, before it coasts for about 70 m and is stopped by eddy current brake. See Fig. 1.


Fig. 1 Pantograph mounting truck of current collection test equipment

    The equipment has been remodeled as follows (also see Table 1).
(1) The electromagnet installed on the pantograph mounting truck was replaced with a strong lightweight permanent magnet to reduce the weight by 24%.
(2) Due to the weight reduction of the truck and renewal of power converter, the speed of the truck increased to 200km/h from 150km/h.
(3) The peak power during running was reduced by 7% by a newly introduced power quality improvement device and an electric double-layer capacitors for quick charge and discharge. An active filter also reduces harmonics and the reactive power to minimize the effect on the power source.
    As a result, it is now possible to implement 400 km/h tests with a speed reduced scale overhead contact line and pantograph, and 200 km/h tests with an actual overhead contact line and pantograph. The equipment has been remodelled with a subsidy from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

Table 1 Remodeling of current collection equipment