Home page CatMon - Catenary monitoring for Adelaide DPTI

Published: 27 November 2019 Client name: Adelaide DPTI Service provided: Digital Monitoring Services

With continuous condition monitoring of the overhead wires, a new predictive maintenance regime could be adopted

When the Adelaide Department for Infrastructure and Transport (DPTI) concluded that its existing catenary measurement programmes, which used traditional measurement trains, operated too infrequently to support a proactive maintenance regime, they sought an alternative approach.

Increasing the frequency of the measurements trains wasn’t a viable option as it proved expensive, whilst access to the network was was already constrained by routine traffic levels.

Instead, Adelaide DPTI approached Ricardo’s technology partner, Telemattica, to introduce CatMon technology to the network.

Real-time catenary condition monitoring

When overhead wire is subjected to normal load/pressures it will typically last for around 10 years before it needs to be replaced.

However, when imperfections such as hard spots emerge they can quickly cause further deterioration in the wire - particularly at higher risk locations where the load/pressure on the wire is higher and the additional wear and tear increases the risk of wire breakage.

CatMon offers an alternative approach to traditional measurements trains by mounting two accelerometers to the pantograph of an in-service train. As the train travels the network during daily services, it captures measurements of the interface between the overhead wires and the pantograph unit.
The measurements are sent in real-time via to a cloud hosted server for analysis before being passed directly to maintenance teams through a web-based interface. When specific concerns are detected the system immediately raises the alarm, with the location plotted on the dashboard's map.

More than half of all cases required immediate response

With CatMon's continuous monitoring data made available, Adelaide DPTI was able to take actions whenever risk thresholds had been exceeded.

In more than 50% of cases, the subsequent inspection by Adelaide DPTI showed that action was required to prevent further damage. Examples of the faults found include incorrectly installed Section Insulator and a faulty air gap crossover.

Digital Monitoring

Find out how we help infrastructure managers and operators adopt proactive, evidence-based maintenance regimes using the latest condition monitoring and data analysis tools.

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