Numerical Study on the Aeroacoustic Performance of Different Diversion Strategies in the Pantograph Area of High-Speed Trains at 400 km/h

Abstract

The speed increase in high-speed trains is a critical procedure in the promotion of high-speed railway technology. As an indispensable and complex structure of high-speed trains, the pantograph’s aerodynamic drag and noise is a significant limitation in the speed increase process of high-speed trains. In the present study, the hybrid method of large eddy simulation (LES) and Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) acoustic analogy is applied to analyze the aerodynamic and aeroacoustic performances of pantograph installed in different ways, i.e., sinking platform and fairing. The results of simulation show that the application of pantograph fairing can reduce the aerodynamic drag greatly. In addition, compared with the pantographs installed alone on the train roof, the installation of the sinking platform brings about 2 dBA reduction in sound pressure level (SPL). Meanwhile, the utilization of the pantograph fairing mainly decreases the noise in the frequency band above 1000 Hz and the largest SPL reduction is up to 3 dBA among the monitoring points. Further analysis shows that the influence of different diversion strategies on the spectral characteristics actually attenuates the dominant frequency of the panhead. In the horizontal plane, the noise directivity of the pantograph installed with a fairing is similar to the pantograph installed alone on the train roof.