Dynamic Smart Fasteners

The Smart Fastener (SF) technology will be capable of monitoring fastener integrity, transferring the data to ensure remote monitoring, providing an audit trail from which the tightness of fasteners can be assessed/trended, and maintenance/other manual interventions can be both logged and quality assured.
The scope of the technology proposed to date has only addressed monitoring of “static” conditions. However, there are a wide range of applications to parts of infrastructures that undergo dynamic forces, for example points systems in railways. The project will explore the feasibility of a “dynamic” smart fastener, i.e. one that can respond to large dynamic changes in load.