Temperature Rise and Wear of Metallized Carbon Contact Strips Under Electric Current of up to 1000A

Through some wear experiments, it was confirmed that the wear of the Cu-infiltrated carbon contact strip is strongly affected by arc discharge. In previous studies, the wear experiments were conducted using small test pieces of the contact strip and applying a relatively small electric current. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the wear of the strip and the amount of arc discharge using an actual pantograph with a current of up to about 1000A. We also measured the wear rate of the strip, the collecting current, and the occurrence rate of arc discharge in the field. In this paper, we describe the experimental results and compare the wear rate in the experiment with the wear rate on the commercial line.