Monitoring of bolt looseness is essential for ensuring the safety and reliability of equipment and structures with bolted connections. It is well known that tangential damping has an important influence on energy dissipation during wave propagation across the bolted joints, which require different levels of preload. In this paper, the energy dissipation generated by tangential damping of the bolted joints under different bolt preloads was modeled analytically based on fractal contact theory, which took the imperfect interface into account. A saturation value exists with the increase of the bolt preload, and the center frequency of emitted signal is demonstrated to affect the received energy significantly. Compared with previous similar studies based on experimental techniques and numerical method, the investigation presented in this paper explains the phenomenon from the inherent mechanism, and achieves the accurate quantitative monitoring of bolt looseness directly, rather than an indirect failure index. Finally, the validity of the proposed method in this paper was demonstrated with an experimental study of a bolted joint with different preload levels.
Finger impairment following stroke results in significant deficits in hand manipulation and the performance of everyday tasks. While recent advances in rehabilitation robotics have shown promise for facilitating functional improvement, it remains unclear how best to employ these devices to maximize benefits. Current devices for the hand, however, lack the capacity to fully explore the space of possible training paradigms. Particularly, they cannot provide the independent joint control and levels of velocity and torque required. To fill this need, we have developed a prototype for one digit, the cable actuated finger exoskeleton (CAFE), a three-degree-of-freedom robotic exoskeleton for the index finger. This paper presents the design and development of the CAFE, with performance testing results.
In this paper, based on the fractal contact theory, a new analytical model for bolted joints is proposed to monitor bolt looseness by using a pair of piezoceramic transducers for ultrasonic wave generation and detection. The time reversal method is used to obtain the focused signal peak amplitude during ultrasonic wave propagation through bolt connection surface. The influence of bolt load on the actual contact area of the bolted joint surface is determined by the fractal contact theory, and the finite element method is applied to obtain the relationship between the actual contact area and the focused signal peak amplitude. The focused signal peak obtained through the time reversal method increases with the increase of applied axial load before saturation. The investigation proposed in this paper is based on the inherent contact mechanism between the two contact surfaces, and achieves more accurate quantitative monitoring of bolt looseness. Finally, a comparison of the predicted and experimental results shown validates the proposed model in this paper.
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