Identificação e localização de falhas em circuitos de via de ferrovias baseada em reflectometria no domínio da frequência

Abstract

This work presents two new methods for the prevention and identification of failures caused by short-circuit between rails or breakage of them in Railway Track Circuits (in portuguese is Circuito de Via - CDV). One of the methods (Railway Track Circuit Fault Locator, LFCDV - in portuguese is Localizador de Falhas em Circuito de Via) aims to identify and locate faults in track circuits caused by low impedance points between rails, or broken rails, and is based on the frequency domain reflectometry technique. The second method (Preventive Measurement in Railway Track Circuit, MPCDV - in portuguese is Medição Preventiva em Circuito de Via) was developed to measure the impedance between rails along a rail network in order to identify low impedance points preventively. Two instrumentation systems were developed specifically to validate the proposed methods through field tests in the MRS logistics network. The tests showed that the LFCDV method is able to identify problems in the CDV and to locate them with good accuracy. Regarding the MPCDV method, the tests showed its ability to identify low impedance points for values up to 9.3 , that is, a value much higher than the 0.1 used as an upper limit to detect when a railway section is not available for traffic, demonstrating the validity of the proposed method and its implementation.