Search Results (6)

The conductors of high-speed railway OCSs (Overhead Contact Systems) are susceptible to conductor galloping due to the impact of natural elements such as strong winds, rain, and snow, resulting in conductor fatigue damage and significantly compromising train operational safety. Consequently, monitoring the galloping status of conductors is crucial, and instance segmentation techniques, by delineating the pixel-level contours of each conductor, can significantly aid in the identification and study of galloping phenomena. This work expands upon the YOLO11-seg model and introduces an instance segmentation approach for galloping video and image sensor data of OCS conductors. The algorithm, designed for the stripe-like distribution of OCS conductors in the data, employs four-direction Sobel filters to extract edge features in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal orientations. These features are subsequently integrated with the original convolutional branch to form the FDSE (Four Direction Sobel Enhancement) module. It integrates the ECA (Efficient Channel Attention) mechanism for the adaptive augmentation of conductor characteristics and utilizes the FL (Focal Loss) function to mitigate the class-imbalance issue between positive and negative samples, hence enhancing the model’s sensitivity to conductors. Consequently, segmentation outcomes from neighboring frames are utilized, and mask-difference analysis is performed to autonomously detect conductor galloping locations, emphasizing their contours for the clear depiction of galloping characteristics. Experimental results demonstrate that the enhanced YOLO11-seg model achieves 85.38% precision, 77.30% recall, 84.25% AP@0.5, 81.14% F1-score, and a real-time processing speed of 44.78 FPS. When combined with the galloping visualization module, it can issue real-time alerts of conductor galloping anomalies, providing robust technical support for railway OCS safety monitoring. Full article

The strong wind environment causes the additional conductor of the overhead contact system (OCS) of the Lanzhou–Xinjiang high-speed railway to gallop, significantly impacting the safe operation of the train. This paper presents the design of an online monitoring system for the galloping of additional conductors in the OCS, utilizing video monitoring for accurate and real-time assessment. Initially, the dynamics of the OCS additional conductor and its operational environment are examined, leading to the selection of suitable data transmission and power supply methods to finalize the camera configuration. Secondly, a preprocessing method for enhancing images of galloping in OCS additional conductors is developed, effectively reducing noise in edge detection through a region chain code clustering analysis. The video monitoring system effectively extracts wire edges, addressing the issues of splitting, breakage, and edge overlap in edge detection, while accurately identifying wire targets in video images. In conclusion, a galloping monitoring test platform is established to extract galloping data from additional conductors through video monitoring. The analysis of the galloping frequency and amplitude facilitates the comprehensive monitoring and assessment of the galloping status of OCS additional conductors. The video monitoring system effectively extracts and analyzes galloping data of the OCS additional conductor, fulfilling the fundamental requirements for the online monitoring of additional conductor galloping, and possesses significant engineering application value. Full article

In a world accelerating the energy transition towards renewable sources, high voltage transmission lines represent strategic infrastructure for power delivery. Being slender and low-damped structures, HVTL conductors are affected by wind-induced vibrations that can lead to severe fatigue issues in conductors and other components. Vibration monitoring could represent a key activity to assess the safety level of the line and perform condition-based maintenance activities. This work proposes an innovative approach based on the knowledge of the physical phenomena and smart technological devices. A wireless monitoring system based on MEMS accelerometers and energy harvesting techniques has been designed to measure the fy_max parameter in the field, which represents a fatigue indicator useful to identify the different wind-induced phenomena and assess the conductors’ strain level. A field test on a Canadian transmission line was used in the check of the efficiency of the system and collection of significant data. Vibrations due to vortex shedding were identified with a maximum value of fy_max = 50 m/s, while subspan oscillation and galloping were not observed. We show the novel method can detect the different wind-induced phenomena and pave the way to the development of suitable software able to compute a conductor’s residual fatigue life. Full article

Because the galloping of iced conductors is one of the main disasters in the State Grid, resulting in huge economic and property losses every year, the research on relevant monitoring methods is of great significance. The existing galloping monitoring technology is mainly based on the contact detection method, which presents potential electrical hazards and power supply problems. In this paper, a conductor galloping monitoring method based on the target detection of infrared sources is put forward to overcome the shortcomings of existing methods. In other words, an infrared source label is installed on the conductor spacer, high-definition night vision infrared cameras are installed on electric power towers to take video of the infrared source labels, and the characteristic amplitude of conductor galloping is calculated by an image recognition and tracking algorithm. The practical application results indicate that the method has the advantages of non-contact detection, safety and reliability, and high detection accuracy. Full article

Galloping of overhead transmission lines (OHTLs) may induce conductor breakage and tower collapse, and there is no effective method for long distance distribution on-line galloping monitoring. To overcome the drawbacks of the conventional galloping monitoring systems, such as sensitivity to electromagnetic interference, the need for onsite power, and short lifetimes, a novel optical remote passive measuring system is proposed in the paper. Firstly, to solve the hysteresis and eccentric load problem in tension sensing, and to extent the dynamic response range, an ‘S’ type elastic element structure with flanges was proposed. Then, a tension experiment was carried out to demonstrate the dynamic response characteristics. Moreover, the designed tension sensor was stretched continuously for 30 min to observe its long time stability. Last but not the least, the sensor was mounted on a 70 m conductor model, and the conductor was oscillated at different frequencies to investigate the dynamic performance of the sensor. The experimental results demonstrate the sensor is suitable for the OHTL galloping detection. Compared with the conventional sensors for OHTL monitoring, the system has many advantages, such as easy installation, no flashover risk, distribution monitoring, better bandwidth, improved accuracy and higher reliability. Full article

Conductor galloping may cause flashovers and even tower collapses. The available conductor galloping monitoring methods often employ acceleration sensors to measure the conductor translations without considering the conductor twist. In this paper, a new sensor for monitoring conductor galloping of transmission lines based on an inertial measurement unit and wireless communication is proposed. An inertial measurement unit is used for collecting the accelerations and angular rates of a conductor, which are further transformed into the corresponding geographic coordinate frame using a quaternion transformation to reconstruct the galloping of the conductor. Both the hardware design and the software design are described in details. The corresponding test platforms are established, and the experiments show the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed monitoring sensor. The field operation of the proposed sensor in a conductor spanning 734 m also shows its effectiveness. Full article