Written by Nigel Dawbarn, Market Segment Manager- Industry Management & Automation

Automation in transport Infrastructure can cover a wide range of applications and requirements. At Phoenix Contact, we have the experience and capability in these areas to help support projects within the following fields:

• Tunnels
• Street lighting
• Moveable bridges

We have also developed some special products for the control of waterways including robust LED signal lights specially tailored for marine applications!

Back to tunnels:  we have worked on a number of tunnel projects across Europe where we supply intelligent control systems linked to energy efficient tunnel lighting based on LED technology, here is an example system showing the Phoenix Contact ATS (advanced tunnel solution). QPD technology for the cabling enables fast installation of the LEDs and LED driver boxes and the ATS communicates back to the central control room providing all the data required.

With street lighting, Phoenix Contact can provide protection from blackouts caused by surge voltages. The BLOCKTRAB devices provide reliable protection for your electrical equipment and can be easily installed in the lamp or cable junction box.

To remotely monitor the lighting systems, continuous exchange of data is possible via wired or mobile communication. The ODP server enables remote transmission of data, protected from unauthorised access. Here we use the TC Mobile I/O X300 to provide local control and remote monitoring using mobile communication.

Your advantages:

• Significant minimisation of maintenance and energy costs through diagnostics and monitoring of all stations in the control system
• Transmission of all data to the control centre via mobile communication for analysis and archiving
• Automatic control of lighting based on calendar entries in case of a communication failure

On to moveable bridges.

Here we have a mission critical situation, where redundancy should be built into the application. Any failure when you have traffic crossing a stretch of water via a lifting bridge or swivel bridge can cause chaos and all of us struggle with any delay in our journeys from A to B.

You can see from the illustration we have designed a redundant network to illuminate control system hardware failure – this type of architecture is used on various applications from the tunnels mentioned earlier, to airport landing light systems and often ship control systems. Phoenix Contact has experience across all these applications.

If you have any infrastructure applications to engineer, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss these and provide a simple product up to complete system solutions including software support when required. Just drop us a line or give us a call.

Until next time…

For more information, contact Nigel by email: ndawbarn@phoenixontact.com or telephone 07584 514958.