British RotaBolt Releases First Wireless Remote Monitoring System for Bolted Joint

The first system in the world to offer true remote, wireless monitoring of bolted joint integrity has been launched by James Walker RotaBolt in partnership with Transmission Dynamics.

The RotaBolt-TD system continuously monitors and wirelessly reports in-service bolt tension, and can even issue ‘tension-loss alarms’ via email or SMS direct to stakeholders. It has the potential to revolutionise maintenance regimes particularly where important bolted joints are difficult to access because of location or operational environment.

“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.”

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.