What Should The Electronic Components Of Railways Comply With? - Alltronix India

1. Every individual knows that trains are subject to withstand all kinds of harsh climatic conditions like winters, summers, rains, storms, lightning, and fog. This means that even the components used within the trains must be able to withstand them. Moreover, the components also must be able to withstand vibrations and abrasion. Every electronic component requires DC/DC power conversion and must perform safely and reliably. The key elements while considering the selection of DC/DC converters and power sub- assemblies include the power supply and the environmental service conditions. A power supply includes the consideration of variations, interruptions, surges, electrostatic discharge, transient bursts, and electromagnetic compatibility. Environmental service conditions include the consideration of temperature, shock, vibration, and humidity. Power Supply The electronic systems and apparatus used within the railway environment encounter wide variations in the input supply with brownout operation, transients, and spikes. They also need to operate effectively and continuously while encountering power supply interruptions up to 10 ms. Thus, every component must be designed to work efficiently in spite of all these hurdles. The apparatus must be able to operate normally during and after the test, with no degradation of performance.

2. Environmental service conditions Various kinds of temperatures are encountered by the railway components, which include internal cubicle temperature, cubicle over temperature, and ambient PCB temperature. Along with this, there are shocks and vibrations that need to be encountered often too. The equipment used on or close to rolling stock will be subject to constant vibration of varying frequency and magnitude. Furthermore, the equipment should be designed to cater to the relative humidity stress limits over external enclosure temperature ranges. IEC60571 in India is the international standard that every railway equipment must abide by, which applies to all electronic equipment designed for control, regulation, protection, and supply installed on rail vehicles. It is also applicable to the electronic equipment that is associated with either the accumulator battery of the vehicle or a low voltage power supply source with or without a direct connection to the contact system; for example, the transformer, potentiometer device, an auxiliary supply. This standard covers all the conditions of design, construction, testing, and operation of the electronic equipment; along with the basic hardware and software requirements. However, it does not apply to electronic power circuits that conform to IEC 61287-1. This standard has been prepared by the IEC technical committee 9: Electrical equipment and systems for railways; and is the third edition that consists of the second 1998 edition and its amendment 1 of 2006. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising of all national electrotechnical committees. The object of the organization is to promote standardization in the electrical and electronic fields, for which it published international standards, technical specifications, technical reports, guides, and publicly available specifications. Alltronix is the leading developer, manufacturer, and supplier of branded and best quality electronic components, antenna systems, and rugged WiFi solutions for train-to-wayside, inter-carriage, and onboard communications.