Micro Stress Analysis and Forecasted Endurance - MicroSAFE

MicroSAFE (Micro Stress Analysis and Forecasted Endurance) is a wireless miniature autonomous stress analysis device that utilizes the ASTM Rainflow Cycle Counting Fatigue Analysis to determine expected life of critical structures. The device is based on an Invocon Internal R&D project where a similar miniature autonomous device was able to acquire data from a single strain gage and compute a Rainflow analysis on the data in real-time. The original communication scheme was a wired serial port to a PC through which the device could be programmed to schedule acquisitions or set to detect events for acquisition. This device was designed for a wide temperature range and low power for battery operation, and is already highly capable of stress analysis and lifetime prediction. Through this Phase 1 project we propose to add an RF transceiver, increase the sampling rate, and implement a dynamic frequency response analysis in the design. The wireless addition allows ease in programming and data downloading. Programming modes in the enhanced device will still include the scheduled and detection modes, but will allow simultaneous Rainflow and frequency analyses for each channel.