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.