Development of Shinkansen Simple Catenary Equipment for Operating Speeds of 320km/h

The compound catenary equipment on the Shinkansen lines currently requires large-scale renewal. To streamline this process and reduce maintenance costs, an efficient strategy is to replace the compound catenary equipment with simple catenary equipment rather than renewing the compound catenary equipment. However, simple catenary equipment, unlike compound catenary equipment, induces large vertical oscillations of the pantograph between support points. When thick wires are used to ensure the current capacity, the fluctuations in the contact force between the contact wire and the pantograph tend to be large because of the hanger intervals. In this study, a new type of Shinkansen simple catenary equipment was developed for operating speeds of 320km/h, which is the current maximum speed on commercial Shinkansen lines. Theoretical analyses and dynamic characteristic evaluations were conducted to validate the performance of the developed catenary equipment. A field test on a commercial line further verified the current collection performance of the developed catenary equipment.