Running test on current collector with contact force controller for high-speed railways

To reduce noise caused by current collectors on high-speed railways, a wing-shaped low-noise current collector has been developed. This collector head is directly supported by a composite insulator. However, it becomes difficult to maintain the predetermined contact force of the contact strip against the trolley wire. Therefore, the vertical height of those apparatus should be controlled actively. The upper part of the composite insulator is under high voltage. When using sensors only under the insulator, it is difficult to distinguish wire disturbance from lift disturbance. In this study, the difficulty is solved by using H infinity controller to estimate those disturbances in each frequency range. In traveling experiments using full-size prototype equipment on the running vehicle, it was confirmed that the contact force variation due to lift of 68 N at the speed of 112 km/h was reduced by about 33% compared with active control without lift compensation, and the wire push-up variation was reduced by about 67%.