Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Network Node Design for Multi-point Bolt Loosening Detection

Bolted connections are commonly used in aerospace structures.Once the bolts on the aircraft are damaged or loose,the consequence will be disastrous.Therefore,monitoring bolt loosening is especially required.However,periodic manual inspection costs much money and time.And it is very difficult to achieve multi-point monitoring for many bolted structures in an aircraft.Therefore,a low-cost,reliable detection method based on wireless sensor networks is presented.The reed switch is selected as a sensor for bolt loosening monitor.The chip PT2262 and PT2272are chosen as hardware codec chip for multi-point placement.A wireless transmitter and receiver circuit is designed on 315 MHz frequency.The codec chip and the wireless transmission are triggered by the reed switches.Bolt loosening is detected by the receiving terminal and indicated by light and sound alarms.The wireless transmitter and the receiver circuit are tested and the monitoring system is verified by experiments.The results show that bolt loosening can be effectively detected within 300 m.The developed sensor network is expected to solve multi-point bolt detection problems and provide a low-cost and reliable monitoring technology.