Automatic Detection and Monitoring System of Pantograph–Catenary in China’s High-Speed Railways

With the rapid growth of China's high-speed railway mileage, relevant safety technologies of railway operation are very urgent at present. One of the crucial parts is the pantograph-catenary system, which is directly related to the power supply safety of trains in high-speed railways. To ensure the safe operation of the pantograph-catenary system and eliminate the hidden danger during the power supply of trains, from 2011 in China, an automatic detection and monitoring system (called 6C system) of pantograph-catenary in high-speed railways was gradually established to timely discover and report all the potential defects and evaluate the performance of the pantograph-catenary system. The 6C system can measure the dynamic and static geometry parameters of the catenary and detect the defective working states of components and the operation conditions of the pantograph-catenary system. Considering the feedbacks from railway administrations, the 6C system can also realize a fine-grained detection and diagnosis of the pantograph-catenary and significantly improve the detection efficiency. In this article, the whole architecture of the 6C system is presented in detail, including six relatively independent parts for the detection and monitoring of pantograph-catenary systems and a data processing center with a three-level structure. Especially, some critical technologies for automatic detection and monitoring of pantograph-catenary systems are introduced. In the end, some new techniques of detection and monitoring are discussed, and suggestions are made for the future development of detection and monitoring systems of pantograph-catenary in high-speed railways.