Design optimisation of railway pantograph-catenary systems with multiple objectives

Both the mean contact force difference and the standard deviation of the contact force were minimised in the presented optimised design of a pantograph–catenary system for the purposes of improving of the current collection quality and the reduction of the contact wear. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was applied to optimise the pantograph–catenary interaction system. The adopted NSGA-II algorithm was improved by avoiding repetition of FEM simulations with the duplicated input parameters and retaining only one of the duplicated results for the next generation selection. Either the catenary or the pantograph can be optimised individually by using the proposed versatile approach. In this research, the design optimisation of the catenary system was conducted first. After that, the pantograph was further optimised based on the optimised design of the catenary system. A case study indicated that the standard deviation of the contact force was reduced by 33.4% in the optimised catenary design and 39% in the optimised pantograph design, and the contact force differences were reduced by 98.3% and 99.9% in the optimised catenary design and the optimised pantograph design, respectively.Highlights Both the standard deviation of the contact force and the difference between the actual mean contact force and the ideal mean contact force are minimised in the optimisation design of a pantograph–catenary system.Either the catenary or the pantograph can be optimised separately by using the proposed versatile approach.Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was improved by avoiding repetition of finite element method simulations with the same input parameter combinations and retaining only one of the same results for the next generation selection.A case study indicates that the standard deviation of the contact force can be reduced by 33.4% in the optimised catenary design and 39% in the optimised pantograph design, and the contact force difference can be reduced by 98.3% and 99.9% in the optimised catenary design and the optimised pantograph design, respectively.