A real-time impact detection and diagnosis system of catenary using measured strains by fibre Bragg grating sensors.

This paper describes an impact detection system using strain signals based on fibre optic sensors(FBG) for the real-time monitoring of the catenary system. The proposed detection system consists of three subsystems: a measuring system, a data processing and analysis system, and a status display and data access system. Because the strain signals obey the normal distribution, to monitor the catenary system in real time, a novel method that combines mobile standard deviation with the mobile Pauta criterion is proposed to distinguish real impact from the strain signal background. The use of this adaptive judging method reduces the misjudgment rate of impacts and improves the impact recognition accuracy. These impacts can be identified by the data analysis system, which provides impact location and their causes using the features of the catenary system. This method can simplify the detection system compared with the traditional location method. An application to a commercial metro line system indicated that the impacts on the catenary system were main caused by overlaps, expansion joints or steady arms, and were verified by correspondence with the floor plan of the catenary and manual inspection results. These results verified the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed impact detection system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]