ABSTRACT
The maintenance of the preload force in mechanical fasteners is of great importance to ensure the load bearing capacity and durability of engineering structures that are executed with bolted connections. An innovative method for condition assessment of mechanical fasteners is presented in this paper, the smart bolts. The special features of the smart bolts are that the bolt or nut itself is the measuring device, i.e. the bolt or nut is modified to a smart component, and that the smart bolts are complete wireless without any permanent power supply. Beside the development of the smart bolts the applied data-driven method is presented aiming to compute the Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL) for preloaded mechanical fasteners based on the permanent recorded smart bolt data. An already executed application of the developed smart bolts to ripped base plates for rail fastening is also presented and indicates the high potential of smart bolts for permanent condition assessment and RUL estimation of mechanical fasteners.
