Modelling electromagnetic fields in DC traction systems using three-dimensional finite-element analysis

The use of the finite-element (FE) method to calculate the potentials and fields surrounding the track in railway traction systems has concentrated on two-dimensional modelling exploiting longitudinal track symmetry. This paper introduces a three-dimensional FE track model, involving solution of the diffusion equation to calculate ground current flow in a DC traction system. It is shown that difficulties concerned with data accuracy, numerical convergence and verification need to be solved.