Windpower Engineering & Development

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Most recent posts
    • News
    • Featured
  • Resources
    • Digital issues
    • Podcasts
    • Suppliers
    • Webinars
    • Events
  • Videos
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
  • Magazine
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Transmission Dynamics delivers bolt tension monitoring remotely

By WPED Staff | November 18, 2019

Successful installation by Transmission Dynamics of remote in-situ bolt monitoring devices on the ORE Catapult Levenmouth offshore demonstrator turbine in Scotland has been completed. This 7-bolt installation will remain in place for the remainder of the asset life, providing globally accessible, directly detected data on bolt tension for these critical fasteners, with automated alarms and stakeholder reporting.

Manual checking and tightening of all bolts and fastening on on-shore and off-shore wind turbines presents a significant operational challenge and cost. To address this, Transmission Dynamics’ Smart Bolt technology provides online remote tension reports on critical fastenings. Battery powered and with a design life of five years between changes, the Smart Bolt module is added to the critical bolts before they are installed. The bolts are calibrated under known loads before being deployed in their final application to ensure precision and accuracy of tension measurements in operation.

With Smart Bolt, bolt tension is directly measured, to remove any risk of incorrect translation from torque, or loss of tension in the installation process. Any change to tension over time is plotted, and a tension alarm threshold (typically 60-70% of the design tension) is set. A loss of tension where total tension falls below this alarm threshold results in an automated alarm via SMS and email to a list of pre-defined recipients and key stakeholders to action and rectify the issue without waiting for the next inspection. A live-streaming option allows installation teams to monitor bolt tension during tightening, checking that the design tension is achieved, removing errors commonly associated with installation tools.

Bolt tension data is displayed on Transmission Dynamics’ Global Data Network, with data updated at predefined periods (once per day for example), and displayed in a clear and user-friendly interface. Access to this resource is secure and can be disseminated by clients to subcontractors and other users conveniently and quickly.

Bolts over M20 are suitable for instrumentation, and any number of Smart Bolts can communicate with a single transceiver to provide access to the Global Data Network. This technology represents a change in mindset in monitoring fasteners in several industries including the wind sector, and will form a key part of instrumented IoT wind turbines now and in the future.

News item from Transmission Dynamics


Filed Under: News

 

About The Author

WPED Staff

Comments

  1. orlando says

    April 19, 2021 at 9:47 am

    it is interesting but replace every 5 year is too fast ,do you have cases with high temperature ?

Related Articles Read More >

Equinor launches ECO Liberty service operations vessel for Empire Wind offshore project
Triton Anchor receives U.S. patents for offshore anchor
US government allows Empire Wind offshore project to resume construction
Richardson Electronics to deliver pitch energy modules to TransAlta wind fleets

Podcasts

Wind Spotlight: Looking back at a year of Thrive with ZF Wind Power
See More >

Windpower Engineering & Development Digital Edition Archive

Digital Edition

Explore the full archive of digital issues of Windpower Engineering & Development, presented in a high-quality, user-friendly format. Access current and past editions, clip, share, and download valuable content from the industry’s leading wind power engineering resource.

Windpower Engineering & Development
  • Wind Articles
  • Solar Power World
  • Subscribe to Windpower Engineering
  • About Us/Contact Us

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising

Search Windpower Engineering & Development

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Most recent posts
    • News
    • Featured
  • Resources
    • Digital issues
    • Podcasts
    • Suppliers
    • Webinars
    • Events
  • Videos
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
  • Magazine
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe