A Comparative Study on the Wind Deflection of Railway Overhead Contact Line Based on Empirical Formula and Finite Element Approach

The assessment of wind deflection of the railway overhead contact line (OCL) is of great importance to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the electrified railway. This paper performs a comparative study of the railway OCL wind deflection based on the traditional empirical formula and finite element method (FEM). Considering the geometrical nonlinearity, a nonlinear finite element approach is adopted to model the OCL. The crosswind load is applied to the OCL through an iterative procedure. The comparative study indicates that the maximum wind deflection estimated by the empirical formula is generally the same as the FEM result when the turbulence intensity is 10%. However, with more than 10% of the turbulence intensity, the empirical formula may give a risky result. Then, some coefficients are introduced to modify the empirical formula according to the FEM results. The numerical examples are presented with different OCL tension classes to verify the validation of the modified empirical formula.