Author(s)

A. Suzuki, Y. Sato, T. Shimada & Y. Mochinaga

Abstract

Contact wire breakage for aluminium wire in compression sleeve A. Suzuki, Y. Sato, T. Shimada & Y. Mochinaga Power Supply Technology Development Division, Railway Technical Research Institute, Japan Abstract To complement the electric characteristics of contact wires, additional feeder cables are installed in the railways in Japan. To save the installing cost, lightweight and inexpensive stranded aluminum wires are used as the additional feeder cables. They are bridged to the contact wires every 250 meters and some strands break by the compression sleeve connecting the copper bridge wire and the aluminum wire, often resulting in disconnection accidents. We have obtained samples of broken strands which were 38 years old, and performed current loading experiments and material analysis. Through the experiments and analysis we found that the uneven contact resistance between aluminum sleeve and strand concentrates their current at a few strands, and the Joule heat cuts the stran

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