Project Acronym: PantOCL
Project Title: Pantograph - Overhead Contact Line Interaction: Dynamic Behaviour and Quality of the Current Collection
Responsible @ACMEC: Jorge Ambrósio
Participants @IST: Pedro Antunes (PhD); José Mário Rebelo (MSc Student)
Other partners: Heriot-Watt Univ (UK); RSSB (UK); PoliMi (It); UoBirmingham (UK); URoma (It); UHuddersfield (K).
Funding Institution: EU (Shif2Rail)
Project Reference: S2R.2017.OP.02
Funding: 140 k€(IST/IDMEC); 700 k€(Total)
Duration: 24 months starting June 2018
URL:

Summary:
Nowadays, railway vehicles with electrical traction are the most economical, ecological, and safe mean of transportation. A crucial system for railway operation is the pantograph-catenary interaction as it is responsible for the delivery of electrical power to the train. This interface limits the maximum speed that railway vehicles can achieve. Furthermore, the pantograph-catenary system represents one of the main obstacles for interoperability of the rolling stock in the EU and, currently, an expensive and lengthy homologation process is required to approve the use of the rolling stock in each European country. In order to improve the competitiveness of the rail service with respect to other means of transport, it is necessary to create innovative methods to assess the quality of the pantograph-catenary interaction and to develop reliable tools that facilitate the approval process, contributing, in a decisive manner, to achieving interoperability.The aim of this Project is to help in the removal of technical obstacles in terms of interoperability and efficiency that affect the rail sector. In particular, it is intended to propose new or adapted parameters to analyse the dynamic performance of the pantograph-OCL interaction and to assess the quality of the electric current collection. Innovative methods will also be proposed to evaluate the new assessment criteria in order to reduce the costs, time and resources needed for the approval process.