Identified commercial applications for the proposed sensor system include monitoring temperature in motors, gear boxes, and other hard to access locations in heavy industrial equipment, fixed wing aircraft, and rotorcraft. Vehicle health monitoring systems being developed utilize sensor data to predict component lifetime, detect incipient failure, and trim maintenance costs by reducing inspections and unnecessary component removal and replacement. Measurement of temperature is one key parameter measured in VHM systems, and ASR&D is discussing further development of the proposed technology with a major aerospace firm. Additional potential applications exist in down-hole drilling, military equipment, landfill monitoring, and civil infrastructure monitoring.
The primary NASA application for the proposed sensor system would be the distributed wireless measurement of temperature as DFI for large area composite validation testing in facilities such as the thermal vacuum chamber (Plumbrook Facility), within cryogenic (and other) storage tanks, and around the vehicle during launch (with some sensors expendable). Numerous small, passive, lightweight sensors could be mounted in locations throughout the area to be monitored, and wireless reader systems could quickly scan through the sensors in their field of view, providing real-time temperature distribution information. Tanks would require only one tank feed-through for the antenna, minimizing heat transfer.
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