An active suspension system for railway pantographs: the T2006 prototype

On railways, the current collection from the overhead line is assured by the pantograph which is an articulated suspension system. Interaction between the contact wire and pantograph produces oscillations which, in order to assure a satisfying quality of current collection, have to be compensated. On high-speed railways, this problem is very important because insufficient quality of current collection involves performance limitations and negative consequences both in maintenance costs and service reliability. A possible solution to improve current collection quality is to optimize the dynamical response of the pantograph suspension system through an active or semi-active suspension system. Trenitalia SPA has financed a research team composed of many Italian Universities (Università di Firenze, Politecnico di Milano, Università di Pisa, and Università di Napoli) to develop an innovative railway pantograph for Italian high speed lines. The activities have been coordinated by Italcertifer. Researchers from Università di Firenze designed the layout of the control system (actuation system, sensors, drive and control algorithm, etc.). In order to improve the tuning of the control strategy, an identification phase has been carried out to obtain a mathematical model of the prototype. Non-linearity of the real pantograph has been take into account by the Bouc—Wen model. The proposed control strategy has been successfully tested on a prototype build by Fabrica Machinale SRL. Experimental results of laboratory tests and performance index of the proposed solution are shown in order to demonstrate the goodness and feasibility of the proposed solution.