ROLLING STOCK
Customised wire-free solution for on-board safety systems
Kevin Canham of Harting Ltd discusses the company’s work with Vossloh Rail Vehicles.
V
ossloh Rail Vehicles is one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of locomotives and passenger trains. include
advanced-technology,
performance locomotives for public transportation networks, and it also aims to create new passenger vehicle concepts and to provide comprehensive maintenance services.
Its products high-
The reliance on hard-wiring made the existing racks labour intensive to build, troubleshoot and repair – and hence relatively expensive. Manufacturing new units also required a long lead time.
Focus on cost Easier to maintain and manufacture
Vossloh wanted a new design that would reduce the cost per unit while retaining the flexibility of the original wired design. It sought proposals from qualified manufacturers including the makers of relay products as well as HIS.
The Harting backplane on board the Vossloh locomotive, including jumper links to introduce system interconnect options
Vossloh Rail Vehicles wanted a new, simplified and more reliable solution to replace the existing hard-wired chassis for two safety- critical relay racks on board its Euro 3000 locomotives. The solution developed by Harting Integrated Solutions (HIS) employed direct connections between the relay cards and input/output connectors to eliminate all internal wiring, resulting in a unit that is quicker and simpler to manufacture, smaller in size, lighter in weight and simpler to maintain: thereby showing considerable cost benefits all round.
The two identical racks hold the 160mm relay cards that govern various safety-related functions. Each card slots vertically into the rack, which contains three safety relays. Input signals to the relay contacts come from the locomotive’s control cabinet. The relay contacts provide signal outputs via rear connectors on the chassis to the various safety subsystems distributed throughout the train. Each card has a status LED that must be on when the relay contact is activated.
Hard-wiring: labour intensive The existing Euro 3000
Vossloh engineers had envisioned a streamlined replacement concept that would include hard- wiring the bus connection of the relay cards to the rear connectors for the output signals. This would have reduced the number of hard-wired connections per unit by half. However, the actual proposal provided only railway standard specifications, not project specifications. This gave HIS, the only supplier with both system design capability and extensive connectivity expertise, the latitude to propose an even more ambitious solution: a relay rack based entirely on direct connectivity without any wiring whatsoever. This was the proposal ultimately accepted by Vossloh.
The absence of wired connections increases the reliability of the unit, making it easier to maintain and troubleshoot in the field, which translates into significant labour cost savings over time. The HIS design can be assembled much faster using an easily repeatable process.
The wire-free design does not lend itself to the same manufacturing errors that plagued its hard-wired predecessor and often necessitated an exhaustive fault-finding exercise before many of the latter were ready for delivery.
Meeting customers’ goals Front and rear views of the re-designed rack
The entire design and production of the HIS concept, including extensive design reviews by the customer and both laboratory and field testing of the prototypes, took six months. On an all-in cost basis including testing, the HIS design represents a cost saving of more than 20% for Vossloh, with no compromise to the quality of the Vossloh product. Despite the size and weight reductions, the unit is as rugged as the one it replaces.
By eliminating all internal wiring, including all jumper links among the cards, it offers enhanced flexibility to reconfigure the system for different projects.
Simpler, cleaner design rack design
features hard-wired DIN 41612 connections from each relay card to the backside connectors and also between the relay cards as a bus connection.
76 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 14
Using Harting’s PCB adaptors and the proven Han DD connectors for the input/outputs, the six rear connectors of the HIS design are mounted on the same backplane used for bus connections and to which the relays are attached. That way, all connections are managed through the single board, eliminating the need for any wiring or a second PCB. This achieved a rack design that reduces the depth by 30%, because there is no
This relay rack solution also underscores the HIS philosophy of looking beyond a customer’s specifications for a solution that exceeds the customer’s expectations. The success of the project has led to an order from Vossloh to provide relay racks for 24 Euro 3000 locomotives for Israel Railways: 48 relay racks in all.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
T: +44 (0) 1604 827500 E:
gb@harting.com W:
www.harting.co.uk
The Vossloh Euro 3000 locomotive
need to accommodate cable looms between the rear connectors and the relay cards. That shorter depth also provides easier access to the rear connector from the front of the cabinet, and contributes to the new units weighing almost 40% less.
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