Lightning Protection and Grounding of Rail Systems

Lightning Protection and Grounding of Rail Systems: Rail systems continue to be an indispensable public transportation vehicle of our daily life. Rail system applications, such as metro high-speed rail, where there are many complex communication systems and signaling, should be considered and evaluated separately in terms of lightning protection and grounding. First of all, electronic systems should be taken into consideration in a railway station and protection against surge voltages should be made with ag surge arresters. These systems are listed below.

It must be protected against surge voltage by low current protection surge arrester of electronic systems at railway stations.
• Alarm Systems
• Power System Protection and Security Center
• Passenger Pass, Monitoring and Security Center
• Radio Announcement System
• Signaling systems
• Interactive Electromechanical Systems
• Rail Circuits
• Rail Feeding Systems
• Lighting Systems
• Data Transmission Systems
• CCTV
• SCADA

Rail systems are internal overvoltage pulses for lightning pulses for at least the least. Transient voltages, switching pulses occur frequently at railway stations and are a serious danger for electronic systems. Again, the establishment of these stations on open terrain shows that even if it doesn't take a lightning strike, it is necessary to be careful against the walking impacts.

Protection of electronic systems in rail systems is very important.

4 protection must be provided in order to provide a complete protection system in railway systems. This is achieved by external lightning, internal lightning, grounding and equipotentiality. It is also very important that gradual protection occurs in the network surge protection systems. B + C in main panels, Class C in secondary panels and Class D products should be used in front of sensitive systems.

GROUNDING IN RAIL SYSTEMS
A sustainable grounding system is required in rail systems. Therefore, grounding in systems where human life is quite important is not to be harmed and protected in the process. First of all, connection points are very important. We always prefer thermocouple applications. Thermocouple construction will make the connection points sustainable. Each metal component, each metal reinforcement must be connected to the same ground and equipotential during the line / station. The lower the rail resistance, the faster the error currents will flow.

On the other hand, current fueling at train departures and stops will not damage the systems when equipotentialization is provided. Corrosion effect caused by the take-off currents is the most important factor that refutes the service life of the systems. For this reason, application of corrosion band at each connection point and design of many local equipotential busbar and use of spark gap surge arrester in important system groundings are the indispensable steps of the system.

Source: Yılkomer