Browse Topic: Radio-frequency identification
The project team developed technology that enables tracking and monitoring of components made of various materials. Our product is an adaptable Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag - which is a replacement for barcodes. The tag allows to track various components throughout its life-cycle and potentially extend the life of such components and reduce maintenance costs. In contrast, the existing RFID tags perform poorly on metallic components. The proposed solution adapts to the environment and enables up to 10m (30ft) tracking range. In this paper we present the results of our work and improvement achieved with different tag designs and hardware antenna array fir RFID reader. We employ passive RFID system which is a battery-less, short-range method of data communication technology. The benefits of employing backscatter communication include easy deployment, low cost and low maintenance. However, all RFID consumers have similar problems and ask the same question "how can we still maintain a fair read rate when the number of RFID tags in our business increases? This has been the main complaint from RFID consumers and the main challenge for RFID scientists. In addition, RFID systems suffer from short communication range and low reliability. We propose solutions to these problems.
ABSTRACT Self-lubricating rotor blade pitch control bearings are critical to safe operation and fleet readiness. However, detecting bearing liner wear can be subjective and time consuming. Standard measurement techniques could lead to unsafe operational conditions or poor bearing life utilization. Excessive inspections, unplanned downtime and poor part utilization may be driven for safety and result in increased cost. New Hampshire Ball Bearings (NHBB) has developed a novel new approach that provides clear indication of when a bearing should be replaced. An embedded bearing liner wear sensor is connected to an Ultra High Frequency (UHF) passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) communication device to communicate bearing status to a hand held reader. Status of each individual bearing is reported. This new technology will allow operators and maintainers to conduct bearing maintenance when it is required by actual bearing condition instead of a fixed schedule based on Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) systems. Application specific and component functional testing on the wear sensor system (conducted at NHBB) shows wear performance similar to traditional blade pitch control applications with no impact to overall system operational capabilities. NHBB and Bell Helicopter are collaborating to introduce this technology on the Bell 525 with flight testing tentatively planned for 2017. Future work on this project will focus on aircraft and maintenance system integration.
ABSTRACT The basics of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) are discussed relative to its use in aerospace. RFID governing standards are presented with the vision of its use in the Bell 525 commercial helicopter program. Specific challenges regarding RFID implementation for part marking on the Bell 525 are put forward. These efforts are a first in the rotorcraft industry, and have made RFID a reality on the 525.
Human space systems, such as the International Space Station (ISS) and future planned missions to the lunar surface and beyond, require the crew’s ability to locate and manage the physical resources that are required for use to achieve mission objectives. However, the large number of assets, ranging from expensive, specialized equipment, to food, water, and medical consumables for the crew is an overwhelming management problem. These assets are stored in numerous containers that are sometimes nested within other containers, frequently removed from one container and placed in another location, consumed, and/or used, and then discarded. Additionally, sometimes the containers themselves are moved. The challenge is to track and manage these assets so that the crew can readily locate items and ground controllers can identify when there is a need to provide sufficient resupply for the mission.
The reliability of manually tracking life critical components on rotorcraft over their operational lifetimes has been troublesome. The accepted system is subject to human errors involved in keeping up with the configuration of installed fatigue critical components. The identity of installed components whether found on component name plates or hand scribed into the parts themselves are not always transferred correctly by responsible personnel into the maintenance tracking system. Even where 2D barcodes are now used, the location and accessibility of the parts, their low readability due to continuous exposure to in-service dirt and grime, and the inability of fixed markings to carry maintenance, condition, and usage date on each component make even this more recent approach lacking. Most importantly, no mechanism exists to automatically transfer this critical airworthiness data to the health and usage monitoring systems currently installed on a growing number of modern rotorcraft models. The use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based component tracking has the potential to eliminate many of these problems and insure that all component maintenance data is available, even if the aircraft must operate for extended periods without access to a network as is often the case when helicopters operate in remote areas. Passive UHF RFID Tags of an acceptable size for this application have read range limitations which do not allow the best design approaches to be taken. This paper investigates an alternative design using a novel semi-passive RFID design approach.
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