Warranty Seal Deformation Identification for Product Warranty Violation.

Abstract

Product warranty seals or stickers are criteria for after-sale warranty services. The unauthorized removal or modification of a seal will void the warranty. So far, there is no detection method to confirm the warranty, other than the visual inspection of the deformation of the seal. Hence, a system to detect, read, and record the ’warranty’ seal deformation is presented in this paper. A flexible piezoelectric sensor was used to determine the mechanical impacts of the seal. Three major impacts are discussed and evaluated in this paper—partial removal, complete removal, and drop deformations of the seal. These impacts were compared with the ambient responses to distinguish the conditions. All three impact cases show distinct characteristics in terms of sensor values, pulses, and pulse widths. For partial removal and complete removal of the seal, both cases exhibited maximum sensor values but differed in pulse and pulse width. A partially removed seal experienced the maximum number of pulses while complete removal experienced the maximum pulse width. However, if the seal experienced a drop impact, it showed lower sensor values, with the lowest pulse and pulse width. Hence, an algorithm was applied to generalize the conditions and decisions of warranty violations.