JPS63125701A - Electric snow melting device for track - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Field of Application] The present invention relates to an electric snow melter for melting snow at a branch section of a track.

(Prior technology) Electric snow melters currently in use include hot air type snow melters that melt snow by blowing warm air onto branching sections of the tracks, as well as melting snow by heating the basic rails and floorboards of branching sections with electric heat. There is an electric heating type.

As shown in Fig. 5, this electric snow melter consists of a basic rail snow melter 3 attached to the side of the basic rail 1 at the branching part, and a floor plate 2.
A snow melter 4 for floorboards is attached to the side of the snow melter. These electric snow melters 3 and 4 have a heating element wired inside the heating tube, and by energizing the heating element, the rails and floorboards are heated to melt the snow, ensuring reliable operation of the turnout. I am trying to do it.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

These electric snow melters are installed at a temperature of 20%, taking into account the maximum amount of snowfall, minimum outside temperature, and minimum rail temperature at the location where they are installed.
0W and 300W are appropriately selected and arranged to set the amount of heat generated. However, these electric snow melters use nichrome wire, which has little change in resistance depending on temperature, so the amount of snowfall varies.

Even when the outside temperature and rail dryness are high, the system must be operated in a state that generates a large amount of heat, resulting in power being wasted.

Therefore, in order to prevent this wasteful power consumption, the system is equipped with sensors that detect the amount of snowfall, outside temperature, and rail temperature, and automatically controls the amount of current sent to the electric snow melter according to the values detected by these sensors. There is. Therefore, there are problems in that the initial cost for installing the sensor and automatic control device is high, and the maintenance cost for the sensor is also high.

The present invention was made in view of this point, and an object of the present invention is to provide an electric snow melter that can adjust power consumption without requiring special sensors or controls.

[Means for solving problems]

To achieve this object, the present invention provides an electric snow melter for tracks that melts snow by disposing a heating element in a heating tube and melting snow by energizing the heating element, characterized in that the heating element is made of nickel wire. It is.

[For production]

The present invention exclusively utilizes the property of the nickel wire used in the heating element that the resistance value changes in direct proportion to the temperature.

In other words, the relationship between the amount of heat generated and the resistance value in a resistance heating element is determined by Joule's law as follows: It is calculated as unit time (S).

In this equation, when the resistance value R changes in direct proportion to the temperature, a large current flows at low temperatures, producing a large amount of heat, and at high temperatures, where a large amount of heat is not required, the current flow becomes small. In the case of nickel wire, the relationship between humidity and resistance value is optimal for the installation situation of the snow melter.

〔Example〕

FIGS. 1 and 2 are partially cut-away front and side views of an embodiment of the present invention configured as an electric snow melter for basic rails. In these figures, 11 is a heating element, which is installed so as to be in contact with the side surface of the basic rail. A U-shaped heating tube 12 is provided inside the heating body 11, and a nickel wire 13 is connected to an insulating material 14 as a heating element inside the heating tube 12.
It is arranged through. Each end of the nickel wire 13 is connected to a conductive wire 15 and a crimp terminal 1 provided inside the heating tube 12.
It is connected to the lead wire 17 via 6. and heating tube 1
2 and the lead wire 17 are housed in a terminal box 18.

The end of the heating tube 12 is welded to the terminal box 18, and the lead l1117 is sealed at the cap 19 with a packing 20. As a result, the terminal box 18 connects the heating tube 12 and the lead I! 17 is maintained in a waterproof state. The inside of the terminal box 18 is filled with an insulating material 21.

FIG. 3 is a partially cutaway view of another embodiment of the present invention configured as an electric snow melter for floorboards.

In this embodiment, a nickel wire 13 is disposed as a heating element in one heating tube 12 via an insulating material 14, and this nickel wire 13 is bent near the tip of the heating tube 12 and then A bottom seal fitting 22 is provided at the tip of the heating tube 12 to seal the tip of the heating tube 12.

Further, the base end of the heating tube 120 is sealed with an insulating bushing 23, and the end of the conductor 15 is sealed with the insulating bushing 23.
3 and is connected to a lead wire 17 by a crimp terminal 16. The connecting portion between the heating tube 12 and the lead wire 17 is a flange 24, an exterior tube 25. It is accommodated in a terminal box 28 consisting of a union 26 and a cap 27. The inside of this terminal box 28 is filled with an insulating material 21.

FIG. 4 shows the measured values of the temperature vs. resistance value characteristics of the nickel wire used as the heating element in the present invention, where A shows the characteristics of the nickel wire at room temperature of 200 W, and B shows the same characteristics of the nickel wire of <300 W. Both A and B were made of the same material, but there were individual differences in temperature coefficient as shown below.

A: R=50(1+0.0045θ)B:
R = 27.5 (1 + 0.00606 θ) where θ is the temperature, or A, and B is 25 to 30 at a temperature increase of 50 ('C).
% increase in resistance value, and decrease in resistance value as humidity decreases.

Therefore, when there is a large amount of snowfall, the resistance value becomes low, and if the low resistance value continues for a long time, a large current is generated and a large amount of Joule heat is generated, and after the snow melts, the resistance becomes high due to the influence of self-heating. This controls the current. In other words, self-control is performed by the heating element itself.

Although the nickel wire of the present invention has nickel as its main component, it is particularly preferable to use a wire containing nickel of 99.5% or more.

Next, an example of a comparative experiment between an electrothermal snow melter using a nickel wire of the present invention and a conventional electrothermal snow melter using a nichrome wire will be shown below. As shown in the example above, the structure of the snow melter used in this experiment cannot be discerned from the outside, and these experiments were conducted in secret with only specific persons with confidentiality obligations present. It was.

Experimental Example 1 Installation location: A snow melter according to the present invention was installed at the No. 120 (B) turnout on the premises of Hirosaki Station on the Ou Main Line, and a conventional snow melter was installed at the No. 121 turnout according to the current equipment standard, and the results were compared for power loss comparison. An hour meter and integrated wattmeter were installed.

Hirosaki Station is inland and has a lot of snowfall, and both turnouts are the tip branches of the busy area to the Hirosaki driving area, so the switching frequency is high, and switching is done at the Hirosaki Station signal handling area.

Number of installed snow melters For both the present invention and the conventional snow melter, 18 each for the basic rail and 36 each for the floor board were installed, and the capacity of the installed snow melters was 10 each.
．． It is 8K14.

Experiment period The experiment was conducted from December 14, 1985 to March 30, 1985.

Experimental Results Both the present invention and the conventional snow melter were operated for 105 days and 1850 hours, with an average of about 18 hours per day.

The reading of the integrated wattmeter on the day of the start of the experiment is 121 K14H in the case of the present invention and 118 in the conventional case, and the reading at the end is 108'02 KWH in the case of the present invention and 22334 in the conventional case. It was KWH. Therefore, the amount of electricity used is 10,681 KW in the case of the present invention and 22 KW in the case of the conventional method.
It was 44 to 216, and it was a saving of 11,535.

Experimental Example 2 Installation location: The snow melter according to the present invention was installed at the No. 8 (a) turnout in Ugo-Ushijima Station on the Uetsu Main Line, and the conventional snow melter was installed at the No. 7 (b) turnout in accordance with the current equipment standards, and the electric power was An hour meter and integrated wattmeter were installed for volume comparison.

Ugo-Ushijima Station is located in a strong wind section about 1.5 m from the riverbank.
Although the amount of snowfall is relatively small, both turnouts are main line branches,
This is a turnout that has a high switching frequency and is treated as C70.

Number of installations The snow melter of the present invention has 22 pieces for the basic rail and 34 pieces for the floor plate, and has a capacity of 11.2KW, while the conventional snow melter has 10 pieces for the basic rail and 26 pieces for the floor plate, and has a capacity of 7. .2KW.

This difference in the number of installations is due to the difference depending on the length of the turnout.

Experiment period The experiment was conducted from December 12, 1985 to March 26, 1985.

Experimental Results Both the present invention and the conventional snow melter were operated for 103 days and 1553 hours, with an average of about 15 hours per day.

The reading of the integrated wattmeter on the start day of the experiment was 13 to 1 in the case of the present invention, and 11 in the conventional case, and the reading at the end was 1 in 10,930 in the case of the present invention, and 11,160 K14H in the conventional case. there were.

Therefore, the amount of electricity used is 10917K14 in the case of the present invention and 11149K14 in the case of the conventional case, and when converted to match the number of installations of the present invention, it becomes 17343KW,
This resulted in a savings of 6426KH.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As mentioned above, the present invention uses a nickel wire as the heating element of the electric snow melter, so compared to the conventional nichrome wire, it exhibits high resistance at high temperatures and is useless for snow melting, significantly reducing wasteful power consumption. It is possible to significantly reduce the electricity charges required for electric heating type operation.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 and 2 show one embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 1 is a partially cutaway front view, FIG. 2 is a partially cutaway side view, and FIG. 3 is a partially cutaway side view.
The figure is a partially cutaway front view showing another embodiment of the present invention, Figure 4 is a temperature vs. resistance characteristic diagram of the nickel wire used in the heating element of the snow melter according to the present invention, and Figure 5 is an electric heating type. It is an explanatory view of the installation state of the snow melter. 1... Basic rail 2... Floor plate 3... Snow melter for basic rail 4... Snow melter for floor plate 11... Heating body 12... Heating tube 13... Nickel wire 1
4, 21... Insulating material 15... Conductor wire 17...
・Lead wire 18.28...terminal box

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An electric snow melter for tracks that melts snow by disposing a heating element in a heating tube and energizing the heating element, characterized in that the heating element is made of nickel wire.