FAQ’s

InterBolt can be used in almost any application, in any industry: from blade studs in the offshore wind industry to crane slew rings in the Oil & Gas industry.

Anywhere where there is a safety or performance critical bolted connection which is challenging to inspect or prone to failure, there is often a strong case for installing InterBolt technology.

The standard InterBolt range is from M16 or 5/8’’. There is no upper limit.

Non-standard InterBolts are available for bolts M10 and bigger.

Get in contact to discuss your requirements and we can often adapt our technology to suit.

InterBolt utilises LoRa wireless technology and has achieved a wireless range of over 1km.

LoRa offers the greatest wireless range of all the low power wireless standards.

The InterBolt wireless settings (such as data rate, coding rate and spreading factor) can be configured to be optimised for a specific application.

Typical battery life for an InterBolt is 10-15 years. The battery is incorporated into the end cap and can be replaced without the need to remove the bolt from service in less than 30 seconds.

To embed InterBolt technology, a recess and gauge pin is inserted into the bolt or stud. In line with common bolting standards such as ISO 898-1 and A193, bolts are re-qualified on a batch sampling basis to confirm that they still conform to the relevant bolting standards. To demonstrate compliance of the finished bolts, an EN10204 3.1 certificate is provided.

Standard InterBolts offer a 95% accuracy (+/-5% error). Additional calibration cycles can be conducted to achieve a 97% or 99% accuracy.

The InterBolt circuitry features both temperature and component ageing compensation so will maintain the same level of accuracy over its full operational life without the need for repeated calibration.

Every InterBolt is calibrated against a high-precision load reference and over temperature. Each InterBolt is supplied with a calibration certificate.The InterBolt sensor meets and exceeds ASTM F2482.

The InterBolt Gateway is used to connect InterBolts to a remote network. The InterBolt Gateway needs to be placed within the wireless range of the sensor. Data transmitted by the InterBolts is received by the InterBolt Gateway and then forwarded to the InterBolt Cloud (or a third-party cloud system) for remote storage, analysis and visualisation.

More information can be found on the Remote Monitoring page on our website.

Below is a link to the InterBolt Cloud platform for a live installation on the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s Levenmouth Demonstration Turbine.

Site: dashboard.interbolt.co.uk/

Email: demo@interbolt.co.uk

Password: Intelligentbolting

The InterBolt system provides two methods of onsite monitoring: embedded LEDs and the InterBolt Tablet Application. These solutions enable technicians to accurately and precisely measure the load of multiple bolts in seconds, without the need for complex setups and the use of heavy or cumbersome tools.

More information can be found on the Onsite Monitoring page on our website.

Yes. InterBolt data can either be integrated into your existing condition monitoring system either at a cloud level (through providing an API to retrieve the data from the InterBolt Cloud) or at a gateway level (integrating InterBolt data into existing gateways). Contact us to discuss your specific requirements.

InterBolt can be used in conjunction with all standard tightening tools including tension and torque tools. If there is insufficient clearance for the end cap, this can be removed when the tightening tool is used but for most applications this is not necessary.

InterBolt measures the elongation of a section of the bolt or stud which is under load, unlike other solutions that measure a combination of loaded and unloaded sections. Therefore, the measurement accuracy is not impacted by changes in the effective length of the bolted connection. This enables changes to the bolted members to be made without impacting the measurement accuracy.

This feature is completely unique to InterBolt.

The load range of InterBolt is up to the proof load of the fastener (typically 90% of the load to yield). As long as the bolts are tightened within the elastic range, there is no limitation to reuse the bolts.

InterBolt has undergone rigorous testing to confirm its robustness. This includes:

• Ingress protection to IP68
• Impact testing to IK07
• Vibration and shock testing to 1000g
• Salinity testing (Salt spray 2000hrs)
• Temperature (-40 to 85 degC). High temperature InterBolt version available with operating temperature range up to 125 degC.
• Humidity (up to 100%)
• Pressure to 10 bar

InterBolt has undergone full DNV-GL type approval.

The LED indicators built into InterBolt are used represent how close the measured bolt load is against the target load of the application.

Flashing red – Bolt load too low

Flashing green – Bolt load in target range

Flashing red/ green – Bolt load too high

Solid red - Bolt load is above proof load of the fastener and permanent elongation of the fastener is possible.

InterBolt can be activated by a magnet to wake the device up for onsite monitoring. The InterBolt will time out after a few minutes. The time in local monitoring mode is configurable through the InterBolt Tablet.

Typically, remote monitoring through the cloud is one sample every 60 minutes, whilst local monitoring is around two samples per second (2Hz).

Burst sampling up to 250Hz is possible to measure dynamic loading of fasteners.

The InterBolt sampling rates and intervals can be configured through the InterBolt Tablet.

InterBolt can be used for bursts of high frequency sampling (up to 250Hz) to measure dynamic bolt loading. An example application for this is dynamic monitoring of blade studs on offshore wind turbines. Dynamic bolt load monitoring is configured for a specific application depending on the frequency/ frequencies of interest. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Alerts are generated in the InterBolt cloud when the reported bolt load is outside the target load range. Alerts are ranked minor or major to indicate how far outside the target load range they are.

The target load range used for the embedded LEDs is configurable through the InterBolt tablet app.

The alert thresholds used in the InterBolt Cloud are remotely updatable.

Yes.

Our lead time typically ranges from 24hrs to 28 days, depending on the availability of the stock bolts and the quantity of InterBolts ordered.

The InterBolt Gateway comes with three different power options:

• Continuous power from either a DC (10-25 VDC) or an AC (100-250 VAC) source.
• Solar and battery powered. This version of the Gateway features a battery built into a solar panel. It is ideal for remote locations or where it is impractical to connect to a permanent power source.
• Battery powered. This version of the Gateway has an integrated battery with a four-month life. It can be setup in less than 10 seconds and is ideal for temporary installations.

The InterBolt software apps are progressive web apps so can be downloaded to almost any laptop, PC or tablet. It is likely the device will not support LoRa communications so our LoRa/BLE wireless bridge will be needed. See the onsite monitoring page for more information.

The InterBolt apps are cross platform so can be downloaded to almost any tablet. Several of our wide scale deployments in the wind industry use customer’s existing tablets and our battery powered LoRa/BLE bridge.