Deicing of The Contact Lines of the High-Speed Electric Railways: Deicing Configurations. Experimental Test Results

Ice accretion on the overhead contact lines of the electric railways may cause severe inconveniences to train traffic. In order to avoid such problems, methods are presently applied that are characterized by high cost and/or some risks as described in this paper. This paper presents new simple techniques for the deicing of the overhead contact lines in the ac and in the dc electric railways that avoid any inconvenience. They consist in rearranging the system scheme in special configurations and inject a proper current into the circuits obtained. Under these configurations, the line continues to be protected against the faults. Experimental results have proved the viability of these techniques. The limits of applications of these techniques are discussed in this paper.