Assesment of the transverse galloping stability of a railway overhead located above a railway bridge

Abstract In this paper, galloping instability of catenary overheads located at railway bridge is assessed. A first contribution of this paper is the experimental characterization, in a wind tunnel, of the flow field above the railway platform for a cross-wind protected railway bridge. From particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements, the averaged flow field above the railway platform is obtained and estimations of the bidimensional averaged wind velocity field are reported. Another contribution of the paper is the measurement of aerodynamic coefficients of a BC-120 contact wire cross section. From both measurements, averaged PIV flow field and aerodynamic coefficients, galloping stability is assessed using a parameter based on Den Hartog criterion. A comparison with the results obtained using the aerodynamic coefficients reported by Scanlon and Stickland is also presented and discussed.