Selected Issues of Safe Operation of the Railway Traffic Control System in the Event of Exposition to Damage Caused by Lightning Discharges

Renata Markowska and Zofia Wróbel
Additional contact information
Renata Markowska: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Bialystok University of Technology, Wiejska 45d, 15-351 Białystok, Poland
Zofia Wróbel: PKP Polish Railway Lines JSC, Railway Lines Establishment in Rzeszów, St. Batorego 26 Str., 35-005 Rzeszów, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 18, 1-27

Abstract: Lightning discharge becomes a serious source of interference and damage for electronic and electrical power systems. Safe and reliable operation of railway traffic control systems requires proper protection against the effects of lightning. However, the current standards on lightning protection, PN-EN/EN/IEC 62305, do not cover railway objects. Moreover, there are no other standards or recommendations dedicated to the railway. The paper is an attempt to apply the procedure of lightning risk management according to PN-EN 62305-2 to select the proper protection measures in railway objects. A case study for the signal box with installed relaying and digital stations of the railway traffic control system is analyzed. The analysis comprises calculations based on the current standard PN-EN 62305-2:2012 but including the issues specific to railway traffic control. The risks of lightning losses have been calculated for two cases: without lightning protection measures and with protection measures proposed to decrease the risks below the tolerable values. The results show that a practically effective solution to reduce the risks is applying surge protective devices with proper characteristics. Another way is replacing unshielded incoming lines with shielded ones of given shield bonding way, and supplementing it with surge protective devices when necessary.

Keywords: lightning protection; lightning impact on railway traffic control devices; lightning protection level; lightning risk management; risk of lightning loss in railway systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/18/5808/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/18/5808/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:18:p:5808-:d:635298

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().