Abstract

This paper presents a technological application of a general methodology to analyze cable structures under moving loads, particularly on the catenary-pantograph dynamic interaction. This work firstly describes the modeling of a finite element moving mesh which integrally moves over the contact wire following the pantograph along the whole catenary, prior focusing on its comparison against the classical finite element mesh. The case study corresponds to the standard EN-50318 one, whose results fulfill the ranges proposed by this validation rule. The main advantage of the moving mesh method is presented in the falling of computational costs about 4 times lower than the classic model with similar precision.