OSCAR Pantograph/catenary interaction

The ageing of the various components of the catenary is a major concern for maintenance. Being able to simulate the pantograph/catenary interactions provides useful information to analyze perturbed situations in the catenary : defects, singularities, extreme climatic conditions. It also helps to optimize existing catenaries and to design the future ones.

The OSCAR software, developed in collaboration with SNCF, is a portable multi-platform simulation package that is certified against TSI and can be used for pantograph/catenary interaction studies. For publications see here. The main features are

  • 3D geometry modeling with full generality (allows detailed modeling of defects, …).
  • Unilateral contact between catenary and possibly non-linear spring/mass models of the pantograph. Extension for cosimulation with MSC-ADAMS.
  • Test verified for many catenaries in Europe.
  • Automated generation of design studies with distribution of computations and merging of results.
  • Typical run times in minutes.

French high speed line, TGV

OSCAR has been used extensively for design and consulting activities by SNCF. For a possible distribution to other partners, please contact SDTools.

Results : Finite Element Model and measured/computed contact force

OSCAR is an extension of SDT which is used to run the application. The SDT Runtime feature was used to generate a deployable application that runs independently from MATLAB.

OSCAR is property of SNCF and you should contact them for licensing. For more information on SDT and related consulting contact info@sdtools.com.