Analytical investigation of railway overhead contact wire dynamics and comparison with experimental results

The wire is modelled as an axially loaded homogeneous beam, with lumped elastic and inertial elements (i.e. droppers and clamps). A state-form expansion applied in conjunction with a transfer matrix technique is adopted to extract the eigenvalues and to express the eigenfunctions in analytical form. Experimental measurements have been carried out in the Dynamics & Identification Research Group (DIRG) laboratory of Politecnico di Torino considering two different damping scenarios, and the modal properties of the test bench have been extracted by using a linear subspace identification technique. The damping distribution is finally investigated starting from the experimental data, in order to seek for the most appropriate damping model.