Innovative FBG sensing techniques for the railway industry: application to overhead contact line monitoring

Guillaume Laffont (1) , Nicolas Roussel (1) , Stéphane Rougeault (1) , Jonathan Boussoir (1) , Laurent Maurin (1) , Pierre Ferdinand (1)

1 LCFO - Laboratoire Capteurs Fibres Optiques

Current collection is a key issue in modern electrical railway, and its performances are mainly determined by the pantograph/catenary interactions. Whilst being the less investigated topic, the pantograph/catenary mechanical interface is the most crucial one. Many incidents and traffic interruptions are due to degraded, or even damaged, electrical contacts between current collectors and contact wires. During the 6th European Framework Program (FP6) CATIEMON project (CATenary InterfacE MONitoring), both FBG-based sensors and systems dedicated to the pantograph/catenary interaction monitoring - directly from the high voltage contact wire - have been developed and tested. This paper describes their design and installation but also results coming from field-tests. It highlights their advantages for the railway stakeholders and end-users in term of train operation enhancement.

Keywords: instrumentation; railway; pantograph-catenary interaction; Fiber Bragg Grating; sensor; Distributed and Quasi-distributed sensing

Domains: Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Optics / Photonic

Guillaume Laffont, Nicolas Roussel, Stéphane Rougeault, Jonathan Boussoir, Laurent Maurin, et al.. Innovative FBG sensing techniques for the railway industry: application to overhead contact line monitoring. 20th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, Oct 2009, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. pp.75035K, ⟨10.1117/12.835346⟩. ⟨cea-03908506⟩