Thermal and mechanical behaviour of an RFID based smart system embedded in a transmission belt determined by FEM simulations for Industry 4.0 applications

The determination of the mechanical and thermo-mechanical behaviour of a UHF-RFID-based smart system embedded in a transmission belt has been the goal of the work reported in this paper. The complex bending and thermal loads occurring during fabrication and service are taken into account by finite element simulations using ABAQUS standardTM. In order to achieve quantitatively correct results, dynamic mechanical analyses using DMA Q800, DMA 2000+ as well as thermo-mechanical analyses using TMA Q400 have been performed to characterize the behaviour of the different materials. The results of the finite element analyses match the experimental observations very well. Therefore, recommendations for design optimization could be deduced that prevent early and fatigue failures of the smart system inside the transmission belt.