Diagnostics of electric multiple-unit train electrical circuits’ equipment during the debugging and acceptance testing

The regularity and safety of the suburban passenger transportations on the Russian Federation railway lines depends on reliable functioning of each unit as well as it is substantially up to operational efficiency of more than 7,5 thousand electric train sections. Today the reliability of an electric train can be maintained by the ongoing preventive maintenance system formed on the schedule-based preventive principle which provides the list and the volume of the required control and recovery operations.

The cycle of large-volume current repair works in depot includes: uninstalling and diassembling operations for revision, repair, assembly, testing, transit of equipment and components, as well as its installation back to the electric train, which are time- and labour-consuming works. On the last stages of the cycle the repaired, checked and operative equipment may be damaged. Also, there is no guarantee for operation of the equipment within the system of the electric train because of the functionality violations.

Lack of the appropriate means and methods for the objective control of repair quality, assembling and adjustment of demanding and the most complex electric train systems especially electrical circuits, make impossible to control the quality of the carried out works. As a result, number of running electric trains with hidden problems occuring after the repair reaches 30-40%. Additionally, they can have lost of new defects caused by the“human factor”. The length of debugging stage, successful acceptance tests as well as further no-failure operation of an electric train, in this case, directly depends on qualification and other subjective qualities of the debuggers.

On the basis of the complex systems of automatic diagnostics, it is possible to change that situation as follows: to carry out the debugging stage at the repair and maintenance department reducing its duration, to provide an objective assessment of repair quality as well as assembly and adjustment of the electric train systems and equipment, and, consequently, to increase the percent of faultless results of the first acceptance test. Such systems are based on the automatic expert failure-detecting system which excludes the subjective failures of the diagnostician and provides reliable quantitative and qualitative state assessment for the most complex and demanding electric trains' systems in accordance with the requirements of the major regulative documents.

Kostyukov V.N., Kostyukov A.V., Kazarin D.V., Basakin V.V. Diagnostics of electric multiple-unit train electrical circuits’ equipment during the debugging and acceptance testing // NDT days 2012, pp. 309-313

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