US 4,989,462 A · Impact sensor

Abstract

A housing, simulating the configuration of a container such as a glass bottle, includes an internal chamber for supporting a center post having an axial bore for receiving a biaxial accelerometer electrically connected to circuitry for detecting and recording the magnitude of the impact force applied externally to the housing. In a method for simulating the impact forces applied to glass bottles as they are conveyed in a bottling operation impact forces are applied at any angle to the housing and are transmitted to the accelerometer. The accelerometer is actuated to generate an output signal expressed in terms of the X and Y vectors of the impact force to the electrical circuitry. The output signal is processed to indicate the magnitude of the applied impact force.

Claims20

Dependent claims

An impact sensor comprising,

a housing having a sidewall forming an internal chamber, a top wall and a bottom wall, said top and bottom walls each having openings therethrough to provide access to said chamber,
a support member centrally positioned in said internal chamber and secured to said sidewall,
detector means retained on said support member in a position within said internal chamber for detecting an impact force applied to said housing
means positioned in said housing and connected to said detector means for supplying electrical power to said detector means to actuate said detector means to convert the impact force applied to said housing to an electrical output signal having a value proportional to the magnitude of the impact force and representative of the direction of the impact force applied to said housing, and
electrical circuitry connected to said detector means for receiving the output signal from said detector means and processing the output signal to obtain an indication of the magnitude of the impact force applied to said housing.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Impact sensor

Life of this patent

Impact sensor

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20