The United States of America As Represented by the Secretary of

Integrated Sciences, Inc.

Carl Fisher, Jr

Arnold J Farstad

Charles R Carrington

George A Grant

Apparatus is disclosed for failure prediction of earth structures. The apparatus is intrinsically safe with all necessary electronics contained in a portable central unit except for a sensor and a preamplifier which are positioned contiguous to an earth structure to be monitored and are connected through an electrical cable to the central unit. The entire apparatus is powered by a six volt battery power source also contained in the central unit with electrical isolation being featured. The apparatus monitors the selected earth structure and predicts failure through analysis of determined microseismic emissions arising from changes in mechanical loading of the selected earth structure. In the central unit, microseismic emissions from the sensor and preamplifier are continuously received, conditioned and then utilized to form event and energy counts which are supplied to a computer that is controlled in such a manner so as to analyze the incoming data and determine therefrom imminent failure of the monitored earth structure with such detected failure being automatically immediately indicated. The apparatus is particularly useful in harzardous environments and in close proximity to personnel whose safey depends upon the relative stability of the earth structure, and is therefore particularly useful in underground mines to predict earth structure failures such as roof falls.

Apparatus for failure prediction of earth structures

A Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) system to transmit and receive data as a sequence of dual frequency short duration tone bursts. Normally the data is transmitted from an underground location, as in a mine, to the surface or to another underground location. At the receiving end the transmitted data is detected as marks or spaces that are used to clock the appropriate data bits into a storage shift register. Erroneous data from wideband noise transients at the receiver are eliminated by the use of an exclusive OR circuit which permits shift pulses to appear at the data register only when one or the other of the two shift pulses are present but not both. To further insure accurate copy of the digital data at the receiver, a receiver alert code is transmitted prior to the telemetering of the actual data. Only after recognition of the receiver alert code is the receiver able to receive the transmitted data bit stream.

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Louisville, CO, United States of America

Carl Fisher, Jr