Estimation of current through human body in case of contact with pipeline in the vicinity of a 50 Hz-electrified railway

Railway power supply and pipelines are often close to each other and in case of a strong parallelism, an induced voltage can appear on the overground metallic part of the gas equipment. The value of the induced voltage depends of many parameters such as the power line and the pipeline vicinity, the supply current, the ground characteristics and the parallelism between these two infrastructures. The touch voltage always induce an electrical current through a human body and can be hazardous for the workers in contact with such installations. In a new line project realization, the downgraded condition should be taken into account in order to prevent the electrical hazardous due to this phenomena. Thus, the induced voltage value can be useful to predict the worst case operation. For these reasons the induced voltage calculations is used to plan the needed protections and their costs. In this paper the induced voltage due to the 25 kV-50 Hz railway power supply is calculated on an overground pipeline in the vicinity. The value of the current through the human body is evaluated and compared with the threshold value given in standards and discussed with respect to the different body impedance and the current flow duration.