Railway: power and flexibility for braking, starting, bypassing and damping

On electric traction units, in the railway sector, the force is obtained simultaneously by mechanical braking (shoes and discs) and by electric braking, most often rheostatic which activates high performance resistors.

METAL DEPLOYE RESISTOR is developing a range of GRIDEX resistors, which equip both the TGV with powerful decelerations, and suburban trains or tramways, which have to brake at very short intervals.

Simplicity, reliability and robustness, these are the advantages of resistors often combined with electrical systems.

There are two types of tensile resistors:

• On-board resistors : the braking rheostats are installed and sized to absorb the energy of the motor (which operates as a generator) during braking phases. This equipment is tailor-made and can be installed in a sub-body or on the roof of locomotives.
• Off-board resistors : in some cases, the resistors are not installed on the locomotives but in electrical substations. Coupled with equipment that makes it possible to manage the current re-injection phases and the dissipation phases (such as ABB’s Enviline ARU system for example), the resistors are custom-sized.

Thanks to its expertise and its R&D center, METAL DEPLOYE RESISTOR also offers supply of spare parts through reverse engineering studies.