Due to the complex and changeful outdoor operating environments of the overhead contact lines (OCLs), lightning strike has become an extremely significant cause of affecting the reliability and maintenance performance of OCLs, which is characterized by stochasticity and seasonality. Hence, to investigate the impacts of the lighting occurrence and intensity on the OCLs, this paper develops a time-dependent probabilistic model for calculating lighting trip-out rate and evaluating the lightning failure performance. In addition, the arrival time and number of the lighting strikes are modelled by non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP), and the probability distributions of lightning intensity (lightning peak current and ground flash density) are parametrized by the actual lightning strike data. Furthermore, a Monte Carlo simulation is utilized to analyze the trip-out probability of OCLs subject to induced lightning and direct lightning. The obtained results can be recognized as important guidance for lightning protection and improving reliability performance of OCLs.

Overhead contact lines,lightning strike,probabilistic failure model,stochastic process,Monte Carlo simulation