Improving diagnostics of damage to railway catenary supports

Abstract

The inspection of reinforced concrete catenary supports is a time-consuming process that necessitates a lot of time to inspect the entire fleet of supports. A large number of supports with a service life of more than 40 years require intensive monitoring and condition forecasting, which can inevitably lead to high economic costs for the work of the catenary electro-mechanics. The introduction of special technical tools to collect and process measurements could solve this problem and allow the planning of a replacement schedule for the supports based on their actual damage. The article discusses the basic factors affecting the load-bearing capacity of rein-forced concrete supports, the main damages occurring, and the procedure for carrying out inspections and assessing the current condition of the supports.