Aiming at the difficulties in locating high impedance ground faults in traction networks caused by weak steady-state characteristics and inaccurate field fault data collection, this paper starts from the electromagnetic transient model of high impedance ground faults in traction networks, investigates the propagation characteristics of traveling waves in traction networks, and analyzes the impact of different impedance discontinuity points on the polarity changes of traveling waves. Based on the polarity variation patterns of traveling waves, a fault section identification method using fault current polarity characteristics is proposed, which integrates the differentiated traveling wave features from multiple measurement points for fault location. The proposed method is validated through case studies, and the results demonstrate that it achieves high positioning accuracy.

Fault diagnosis, high impedance ground faults, high-speed railway traction networks, propagation characteristics