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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Sun Jul 01, 2018 10:50 am 
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Over in the motorway lighting topic Sotonsteve wrote:

sotonsteve wrote:
According to an article by Lux, Highways England has reported issues of lanterns falling off columns. This issue has been noted to affect Philips Iridium2, Philips Luma and Urbis Ampera.

I've already noted incidents of Lumas shearing from their spigots on the M27 and M275 in Portsmouth, and in the midlands I have seen lots of Iridium2s with their canopies up or missing.


There are now a total of 6 Lumas missing from columns in the Portsmouth area, the first failures being noticed 18 months ago. Given the size and weight of these lanterns - the Luma and Ampera are all aluminium, the issue poses a considerable safety issue, especially given that thousands of these lanterns are installed on the trunk road network.

Fellow Ukastle member Claire mentioned to Sotonsteve and I, that a belt and braces safety restraint method is now being used on some Lumas. By sheer coincidence following a visit back from meeting with her, we saw such restraints being used on Lumas on the A43 at Towcester.

A stainless steel band is secured around the Luma (meaning it can't be opened for maintenance) and a lanyard runs from the band to the column. If the spigot/lantern housing were to fail, the lanyard will prevent the remains of the lantern falling to the ground.

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Another example.

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It's not clear however, what stops the loop of the lanyard sliding off the end of the column spigot - possibly the remains of the lantern. All of the Portsmouth failures have left a significant chunk of the back of the Luma still attached to the column.


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:10 am 
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This has also been done to the LED lighting along the A14/A428 at the Girton Interchange. This coincided with the works to modify the junction.

It's all an extremely poor show!


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:08 pm 
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A small quantity of the Urbis Amperas installed in Colchester as part of its LED trial in March 2015 have gone limp. There's no sign that the lantern heads are in danger of falling off, even if the joint at the end of the spigot doesn't look up to the job, especially on the Ampera Maxis:

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A limp Ampera Maxi photographed near Colchester Bus Station in November 2017.

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A limp Ampera Midi photographed in Middleborough, Colchester, in November 2017.

I will vouch for the unfathomable weight of some new LED lanterns, e.g. the Urbis Ampera, as I purchased an Ampera Midi off Ebay a short while ago. The published weight of the Ampera Midi is a heavyweight 11.5kg and the published weight of an Ampera Maxi is an arm-aching 18.1kg.

The heavy weights may explain why the bracket arms on existing columns are frequently cut back to just the stubs when old SOX and SON lanterns are casually replaced with new LED lanterns in Essex, even if it retreats the lantern into the crown of a tree and reduces the amount of light reaching the road!


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 3:50 pm 
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On the M4 on the junction 8/8a roundabout, there is another failed Luma. Further west approaching J11, there are the remains of 2 failed lanterns on the same column. The failure seems to be where the spigot tube attaches to the lantern to form the hinge for post or side entry mounting. The entire lantern seems to break away at this hinge point.

I wonder if  the Amperas are failing in a similar way, but not so destructively as to break off entirely and fall from the column?


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:17 pm 
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Further to my last post, I found this Highways England safety bulletin. It is interesting to note, that the failures mentioned in that refer to the canopy detaching and presumeably leaving the frame still attached to the column. However the failures I have seen have been different.

The spigot is attached to the lantern body with stainless steel cap head screws - probably M8. Stainless steel in aluminium is never a good idea due to corrosion of dis-similar metals. I found this image online showing the arrangement.

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This image extracted from the Philips datasheet confirms the basic arrangement and 2 types of spigot.

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Some of the failures I have seen, have been where those cap head screws have failed - or the casting that they screw into has, leaving just the spigot attached to the column.

A 3rd failure type seems to be failure of the lower frame, with that and the canopy falling to the ground. The failure seems to be in the area along the blue line.  Image again from the Philips datasheet.

Image

This results in a section of the back of the frame still attached to the column bracket, but with the canopy missing. For the canopy to be shed, the hinge pin must have also failed, either as the lantern breaks up structurally - or as the HE bulletin has found -  the hinge pin is missing to start with.

The HE mitigation of tie-wrapping the canopy to the frame, will only guard against the failure mechanism in their bulletin, not the 2, I have described!

I wonder if the root cause of these failures are horizontal (up/down) oscillations of the lantern caused by the wind - or oscillation of the bracket/column, which then overstresses the rear of the lantern?


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Tue Jul 10, 2018 7:46 pm 
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I wonder what will happen to the Lumas in Hampshire and nearby. Highways England have rolled out LED across most of the local trunk road network, and the majority of the new lanterns were Lumas. None have had safety measures taken to them yet, but they are no longer installing new Lumas it seems and instead opting for Holophane V-Max lanterns as standard. There's also the Lumas on the PFIs, although the failures principally seem to be with the largest size Luma 3s, which are large and heavy. Luma 2s and smaller don't seem to have the same issues due to being smaller and lighter.


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Tue Jul 24, 2018 3:55 pm 
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Does this column look at risk of falling do you think? (It doesn't look to me that way, yet as you can see, it's getting replaced).


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Wed Jul 25, 2018 12:13 pm 
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Hi Deadendwaterfall,

I have seen similar things in Cumbria where a seemingly good lamp post had been replaced. The reason for this is they had failed their non destructive metal testing which had been carried out. So on the outside the column looks good but internally it is rotten.

Thanks,

Andrew.


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 3:37 pm 
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Also on the subject of column replacements, a few months ago, North Lincolnshire Council installed Urbis LEDs on concrete columns on Chancel Road Scunthorpe as per the £6 million lighting scheme. Now, they are replacing the columns too but the new columns have exactly the same model of LEDs on them, rather than the still new ones being transferred over.

Why do this especially when I've seen an LED get installed on a concrete column further down the road earlier this year but get reused on a replacement column?


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 Post subject: Re: Lamppost falling
PostPosted: Fri Aug 10, 2018 7:31 am 
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Less work and means there will also be one lamp working. The labour cost of swapping lanterns between columns is greater than the cost of lanterns.


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