National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN IEC 61373:2026. It is identical to IEC 61373:2026. It supersedes BS EN 61373:2010, which will be withdrawn on 30 September 2029.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee GEL/9, Railway Electrotechnical Applications.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 September 2026.

This European Standard was approved by CENELEC on 21 August 2026. CENELEC members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration.

Up-to-date lists and bibliographical references concerning such national standards may be obtained on application to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre or to any CENELEC member.

This European Standard exists in three official versions (English, French, German). A version in any other language made by translation under the responsibility of a CENELEC member into its own language and notified to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre has the same status as the official versions.

CENELEC members are the national electrotechnical committees of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United Kingdom.

European foreword

The text of document 9/3266/FDIS, future edition 3 of IEC 61373, prepared by TC 9 "Electrical equipment and systems for railways" was submitted to the IEC-CENELEC parallel vote and approved by CENELEC as EN IEC 61373:2026.

The following dates are fixed:

This document supersedes EN 61373:2010 and all of its amendments and corrigenda (if any).

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CENELEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any feedback and questions on this document should be directed to the users’ national committee. A complete listing of these bodies can be found on the CENELEC website.

Endorsement notice

The text of the International Standard IEC 61373:2026 was approved by CENELEC as a European Standard without any modification.

FOREWORD

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a worldwide organization for standardization comprising all national electrotechnical committees (IEC National Committees). The object of IEC is to promote international co-operation on all questions concerning standardization in the electrical and electronic fields. To this end and in addition to other activities, IEC publishes International Standards, Technical Specifications, Technical Reports, Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) and Guides (hereafter referred to as "IEC Publication(s)"). Their preparation is entrusted to technical committees; any IEC National Committee interested in the subject dealt with may participate in this preparatory work. International, governmental and non-governmental organizations liaising with the IEC also participate in this preparation. IEC collaborates closely with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in accordance with conditions determined by agreement between the two organizations.
The formal decisions or agreements of IEC on technical matters express, as nearly as possible, an international consensus of opinion on the relevant subjects since each technical committee has representation from all interested IEC National Committees.
IEC Publications have the form of recommendations for international use and are accepted by IEC National Committees in that sense. While all reasonable efforts are made to ensure that the technical content of IEC Publications is accurate, IEC cannot be held responsible for the way in which they are used or for any misinterpretation by any end user.
In order to promote international uniformity, IEC National Committees undertake to apply IEC Publications transparently to the maximum extent possible in their national and regional publications. Any divergence between any IEC Publication and the corresponding national or regional publication shall be clearly indicated in the latter.
IEC itself does not provide any attestation of conformity. Independent certification bodies provide conformity assessment services and, in some areas, access to IEC marks of conformity. IEC is not responsible for any services carried out by independent certification bodies.
All users should ensure that they have the latest edition of this publication.
No liability shall attach to IEC or its directors, employees, servants or agents including individual experts and members of its technical committees and IEC National Committees for any personal injury, property damage or other damage of any nature whatsoever, whether direct or indirect, or for costs (including legal fees) and expenses arising out of the publication, use of, or reliance upon, this IEC Publication or any other IEC Publications.
Attention is drawn to the Normative references cited in this publication. Use of the referenced publications is indispensable for the correct application of this publication.
IEC draws attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a) patent(s). IEC takes no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of any claimed patent rights in respect thereof. As of the date of publication of this document, IEC had not received notice of (a) patent(s), which may be required to implement this document. However, implementers are cautioned that this may not represent the latest information, which may be obtained from the patent database available at https://patents.iec.ch. IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

IEC 61373 has been prepared by IEC technical committee 9: Electrical equipment and systems for railways. It is an International Standard.

This third edition cancels and replaces the second edition published in 2010. This edition constitutes a technical revision.

This edition includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous edition:

consideration of specific ASD spectra from onboard measurements and certification limited to the specific case;
exclusion from the scope of applicability of traction motors and any substructure not equipped with electrical, electronic or pneumatic device;
clarification for order of testing and typical test sequence, taking into account the possibility of simultaneous multi-axis testing;
recommendation and guidance for removing resilient mounts of the equipment (if located between the equipment and the main structure) during the long-life test;
qualification of the fixture device used to attach the equipment to the test bench;
guidance for using a measuring point as a possibility to assess mechanical integrity;
change of the method to calculate the acceleration ratio which shall be applied to the functional ASD value to obtain the simulated long-life ASD value;
duration of long-life test can be set from 5 h to 100 h per axis, with corresponding acceleration ratio (default value) indicated in a table;
clarification of the concept of structural integrity;
description of test exemption cases, subassembly tests, and finite element analysis for structural parts of equipment (new Annex E);
the lowest frequency f₁ of ASD spectra of Category 1 and Category 2 is fixed at 5 Hz as a default value, and the lowest frequency f₁ of ASD spectra of Category 3 is fixed at 10 Hz as a default value;
update of ASD spectra for functional random vibration test: Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table A.2 and Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8, Figure 10. This update was recommended in the Rail Safety and Standard Board research program document: “Vibration environment for rail vehicle mounted Equipment”;
new annex F dedicated on urban vehicle operating on pneumatic tyres.

The text of this International Standard is based on the following documents:

Full information on the voting for its approval can be found in the report on voting indicated in the above table.

The language used for the development of this International Standard is English.

This document was drafted in accordance with ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, and developed in accordance with ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1 and ISO/IEC Directives, IEC Supplement, available at www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs. The main document types developed by IEC are described in greater detail at www.iec.ch/publications.

The committee has decided that the contents of this document will remain unchanged until the stability date indicated on the IEC website under webstore.iec.ch in the data related to the specific document. At this date, the document will be

reconfirmed,
withdrawn, or
revised.

INTRODUCTION

This document covers the requirements for random vibration and shock testing items of pneumatic, electrical and electronic equipment or components (hereinafter only referred to as equipment) to be fitted on to railway vehicles. Random vibration and shock is the only method to be used for equipment or component approval.

The tests contained within this document are specifically aimed at demonstrating the ability of the equipment under test to withstand the type of environmental vibration conditions normally expected for railway vehicles. In order to achieve the best representation possible, the values quoted in this document have been derived from actual service measurements submitted by various contributing bodies from around the world.

This document is not intended to cover self-induced vibrations as these will be specific to particular applications.

Engineering judgement and experience are recommended in the execution and interpretation of this document.

This document is suitable for design and validation purposes; however, it does not exclude the use of other development tools (such as sine sweep), which can be used to ensure a predetermined degree of mechanical and operational confidence. The test levels to be applied to the equipment under test are dictated only by its location on the train (i.e. axle, bogie or body-mounted).

It should be noted that these tests can be performed on prototypes in order to gain design information about the product performance under random vibration. However, for test certification purposes, the tests are carried out on equipment taken from normal production.

The procedures and requirements defined in this document do not substitute or overrule any structural assessment required from other structural requirement standards. This document is not intended to be used as a proof of fatigue strength.

NOTE European Standards EN 12663 and EN 13749 are examples of such structural requirement standards.

1 Scope

This document specifies the requirements for testing items of equipment intended for use on railway vehicles which are subsequently subjected to vibrations and shock owing to the nature of railway operational environment. To gain assurance that the quality of the equipment is acceptable, it is exposed to tests of reasonable duration that simulate the service conditions seen throughout its expected life.

Simulated long-life testing can be achieved in a number of ways each having their associated advantages and disadvantages, the following being the most common:

amplification: where the amplitudes are increased and the time base decreased;
time compression: where the amplitude history is retained and the time base is decreased (increase of the frequency);
decimation: where time slices of the historical data are removed when the amplitudes are below a specified threshold value.

The amplification method as stated in item a) above, is used in this document and together with the publications referred to in Clause 2; it defines the default test procedure to be followed when vibration testing items for use on railway vehicles.

Whilst this document is primarily concerned with railway vehicles on fixed rail systems, its wider use is not precluded. For systems operating on pneumatic tyres, or other transportation systems such as trolleybuses, where the level of shock and vibration clearly differ from those obtained on fixed rail systems, specific test levels can be considered. In that case, the frequency spectra and the shock duration and amplitude are computed in compliance with the guidelines in Annex A.

Annex F provides the functional random vibration load that can be considered by the user for urban vehicles operating on pneumatic tyres.

This document applies to single axis testing. However, multi-axis testing is possible.

The anchoring bolts at the fixing point(s) of the equipment are not evaluated in this document.

This document is intended to evaluate equipment which is attached to the main structure of the vehicle (and components mounted thereon). It is not intended to test equipment which forms part of the main structure. Main structure in the sense of this document means car body, bogie and axle.

The following items are out of scope of this document:

the traction motors for railway vehicles;
any mechanical substructure not equipped with electrical, electronic or pneumatic component.

Additional or special vibration tests for some specific equipment are not specified in this document, for example:

equipment mounted on, or linked to, items which are known to produce defined frequency excitation;
equipment such as pantographs, shoegear, or suspension components which are known to be exposed to specific shock and vibration excitation;
equipment intended for use in special operational environments as specified by the customer;
transportation and handling tests.

2 Normative references

3 Terms, definitions, symbols and abbreviated terms

3.1 Terms and definitions

3.2 Symbols and abbreviated terms

4 General

5 Order of testing

6 Test conditions

6.1 General

6.2 Method of mounting and orientation of equipment under test

6.3 Reference and check points

6.4 Mechanical state and functioning during test

6.5 Reproducibility for random vibration tests

6.6 Measuring tolerances

6.7 Recovery

7 Initial measurements and preconditioning

8 Functional random vibration tests

8.1 Test severity and frequency range

8.2 Duration of the functional random vibration tests

8.3 Functioning during tests

9 Simulated long-life tests at increased random vibration levels

9.1 Test severity and frequency range

9.2 Duration and acceleration ratio of the simulated long-life vibration tests

10 Shock tests

10.1 Pulse shape and tolerance

10.2 Velocity change

10.3 Mounting

10.4 Repetition rate

10.5 Test severity, pulse shape and direction

10.6 Number of shocks

10.7 Functioning during tests

11 Transportation and handling

12 Final measurements and acceptance criteria

12.1 Final measurements

12.2 Acceptance criteria

13 Test exemption

14 Report

15 Test certificate

16 Disposal

Bibliography