A Smart Sensing Architecture for Misalignment Measurements

Smart sensing architectures based on inductive readout are very intriguing solutions to perform measurements in industrial and in general in harsh environments. The proposed system is based on a primary coil as fixed sensing element and in front of it, a movable and battery less receiving sensor coil. The architecture measures the misalignment, with a non-destructive approach, between two objects and offers a high flexibility to perform the measurements also in presence of humidity, dirtiness, debris, oils or other non-homogeneous surfaces. Furthermore, it is easy to be implemented at low cost and it presents a wide operative range. For data acquisition, a low energy Bluetooth board is used, which starts automatically as soon as a minimum voltage value is reached. The system has been designed and studied; a laboratory prototype has been realized and experimentally validated. The results demonstrate the suitability of the proposed method.