Optical sensors for railway infrastructure monitoring

The goodness of the current collection of the pantograph from the contact line in railway vehicles requires many analyses on the dynamics of their interaction. To this purpose, it is necessary a monitoring system that is able to control the sensitive parameters that describe the real status of the components involved. The scope of this research is framed in the context of the systems for the monitoring of the contact line and its interaction with the pantograph due to the running of trains in 3,000 VDC railway lines. In particular, the optical technology is proposed for the measuring of the catenary height. A measurement campaign has been carried out in the year 2014 and the recorded data have been treated through a dedicated algorithm in order to define suitable indices and thresholds that allow to understand the goodness or the badness of the current collection.