New Approaches to Assessing State of Insulating Material of Traction Electric Motors of Electric Locomotives

Increasing the efficiency of functioning of railway transport in the field of cargo and passenger transportation, reducing operating costs are immediately related at present to the cost of maintaining and restoring traction rolling stock. Optimization of operating costs is possible on the basis of the transition from a scheduled preventive system of repair of traction rolling stock, based on assessment of the average statistical level of its technical condition without considering peculiarities of the operating range, to a system of repair and maintenance based on the actual technical condition, objectively determined on the basis of creation and implementation of onboard, portable and stationary means of technical diagnostics of units and assemblies, of development of a data bank on the current state of electric locomotives and their units. Power plants belong to the basic elements and units of traction rolling stock structures. The reliability and service life of traction electric motors of electric locomotives, especially winding insulation, does not meet modern requirements, and the existing systems for diagnosing the state of winding insulation do not allow providing the required level of failure detection at an early stage. To qualitatively determine the wear category of the insulating material, new approaches have been developed. They are based on the method of IR spectrophotometry based on relative rate of transmittance of electromagnetic radiation in a gas atmosphere removed from the traction motor winding. This is the basis for development and implementation of onboard system for automated monitoring of the current state of the electric motor insulation and assessment of the residual resource.