Scalable Wireless Wearing Monitoring System for Harsh Industrial Environment

Abstract

A scalable system for wireless wear monitoring in a distributed harsh industrial environment, in which installation of the electronic equipment near the distributed wearing measuring locations is unfeasible, has been successfully designed, developed and deployed. The system is composed of a novel <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LC</i> -type passive wireless wear sensor system, a sensor readout coil, an electronic equipment, a readout unit for a scalable multisensor system and a control and monitoring system. The capacitor structure, employed as a sensing device in the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LC</i> sensor manufactured on low cost PCB, provides a linear response to the wear level. This allowed us to define a measuring and calibration method to suppress the cable effects from each distributed readout coil to the electronic equipment readout unit. It was possible to achieve a multiple simultaneous measurements in different sensors distributed along an industrial process without significant cabling influence. Concerning the sensor data analysis, a double Holt-Winters method with trend was used to reduce noise effects and an “experience based learning” tool was implemented in order to solve any misbehavior or time lag. Laboratory measurements and on-site operation results in an article mill indicate 1 mm precision and about 0, 5 MHz/mm sensitivity of the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LC</i> -type passive wireless wear sensor system.