A solution to transient failures of HVI track circuits caused by inrush interference based on wavelet analysis

Zanwu Huang*, Clive Roberts, Lei Chen, Shaobin Li, Hongguang Wang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A track circuit never reporting block failure means a track section is reported as vacant to a railway control system, even if it is occupied by a train. This is a wrong side failure which may cause an accident. A high-voltage impulse (HVI) track circuit based on the fast Fourier transform is currently in use in China to solve this problem, but it has been observed that when used in electric railway systems large inrush currents can lead to another track circuit failure mode, which is referred to as a transient reporting block (TRB) in this paper. The root causes and impact of TRB track circuit failures are analyzed and a solution to the TRB failure mode based on wavelet analysis is proposed. Computer simulations and onsite experiments are carried out and the results show that the proposed approach can accurately extract the feature frequency and then effectively avoid the TRB failure, even if the HVI track signal is disturbed by a significant inrush of traction-return current.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)359-369
Number of pages11
JournalProceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit
Volume231
Issue number3
Early online date17 Feb 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2017

Keywords

  • high-voltage impulse
  • inrush traction-return current
  • Track circuit failure
  • wavelet analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Mechanical Engineering

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