Train Safety Systems Use Vicor Modules and Configurable Power Supplies
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Train Safety Systems Use Vicor Modules and Configurable Power Supplies
In recent times, most train accidents seem to involve vehicles and pedestrians, but fires, bomb attacks, and derailment accidents occur fairly frequently. Train collisions are less frequent, but as recently as 2009, train collisions still do occur somewhere in the world, resulting in loss of life. At least one, and as many as six, collisions occurred in each of the last ten years. Considering that safety systems ― even some that can automatically stop the train ― have been in use since the early twentieth century, it seems a little surprising that any occur. On the other hand, that the record is as good as it is may be testimony to their effectiveness.
The Vicor customer is a leading manufacturer of electronic products for railroad and mass transit applications, especially those involving safety. One class of system is cab signaling that presents track status information to the driver in the cab. Continuous cab signaling is, of course, an uninterrupted flow of information to which the driver is expected to respond. More recent cab signaling applications are computer-based systems, which can stop the train if the human operator ignores dangerous information. They also manufacture intermittent cab signaling systems and operator displays.
This customer builds its own power supplies and has a very long record using all of the Vicor modules as well as the MegaMod family, all with the common input voltage of 72 V. This company is a committed user of the Vicor Power Bench advanced power design tools to create their own custom power supplies.
The major reasons that they use Vicor products are lower development cost and low design risk, but they value the high power density, design flexibility, and fast time to market as well.
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