WORLD FIRST CLAIMED FOR REMOTE BOLTED JOINTS MONITORING

The RotaBolt-TD system continuously monitors and wirelessly reports in-service bolt tension and can issue tension-loss alarms via email or SMS direct to the user. It has the potential to revolutionise maintenance regimes particularly where important bolted joints are difficult to access because of location or operational environment, it is claimed. "With the RotaBolt-TD System, you will be able to monitor all the important bolted joints in an offshore wind farm from your mobile phone," commented Rod Corbett from James Walker RotaBolt. "It is going to have a major impact on maintenance costs across many different industries and applications." Jarek Rosinski from Transmission Dynamics added: "RotaBolt-TD is supported with state of the art instrumentation and data automation, and can be deployed with a full data management and reporting package. We know that it is a system that many have been waiting for." Each bolt in the RotaBolt-TD system contains micro instrumentation and a wireless transmitter. It periodically reads bolt tension, critical to the integrity of the joint, and then wirelessly transfers the information to a local transceiver which collects the data from any number of bolts and then transmits the report via the internet, or GSM network, to a secure server. The system, which has taken over five years to research and develop, allows for continuous monitoring of bolt tension and automatic report generation. It can deploy an alarm in case of a sudden loss of bolt tension below a predefined level, notifying authorised stakeholders globally by either email or SMS. Each bolt contains a coin-cell battery which ensures 5 years continuous unattended operation. Transmission Dynamics provide services to blue-chip technology companies around the world and have clients in the renewable energy, mining, marine, defence, automotive and rail sectors. They design and manufacture their own range of wireless telemetry and data acquisition systems for recovering in-service load information from the most demanding of environments. James Walker RotaBolt claims to have been at the forefront of bolted joint reliability since the 1980s, championing its bolt tension technology across a wide range of industries. Today the company's fasteners are used to assure bolted joint reliability in environments where pressure containment, vibration, fatigue and structural slippage are present.