A Study of Failure Factor of Resonant Capacitor for Impedance Bond

A resonant capacitor, one of the railway signalling equipment, is attached to the impedance bond of the track circuit. If this resonant capacitor fails, the track circuit voltage will have an impermissible drop, resulting in operational trouble. On the other hand, the failure factors of this resonant capacitor such as aged deterioration or lightning strike can't be identified, so the effective countermeasures have not been taken. We have been studying methods for estimating the probability of occurrence of lightning strikes in the signalling equipment based on the lightning conditions such as lightning current and lightning strike position. Utilizing this study result, we investigated the failure factors of the resonant capacitors, including the effect of lightning surge.