A rolling stock-based system for catenary condition monitoring: Validation through numerical simulations on a rigid catenary

Condition monitoring of rolling stock and infrastructure is becoming a key requirement for railway companies throughout the world, which are making a significant effort to equip commercial trains with diagnostic systems, to gather data daily instead of periodically as currently allowed by special-purpose diagnostic trains. This paper is part of a long-term work in which a diagnostic system, previously proposed by the authors, is being developed in cooperation with rolling-stock manufacturers, train operating companies and the Italian infrastructure manager. The system is able to monitor the pantograph and the overhead contact line through authomatic data acquisition and post processing in a wayside server, and should help shifting maintenance operations from time-based to condition based approaches. As a further application, the paper is focused on the detection of defects in a rigid overhead contact line. Numerical simulations of a healthy and a defective line are carried out to address the problem of signature definition for the identification of the defects.