Canning, Justin (2017) Helicopter Vibration Monitoring During Patient Transport. [USQ Project]
Abstract
Neonates are children that are less than four weeks old. When neonates require more medical care than a smaller hospital can give, they are sometimes transported via helicopter to a larger institution. There was some concern amongst the medical community that the vibrations that the neonates are exposed to during this transport may cause long-term damage to the patient. In an attempt to reduce the likelihood of this occurring, this project sought to investigate a device to measure vibration in a helicopter, with the intention of such a device to eventually be implemented into an active vibration controlling system.
After analysing the problem and the devices commercially available it became apparent that if the device would potentially be implemented into a larger system one day, commercially available loggers would not be sufficient. Hardware was evaluated and selected, specifically, the Arduino Due microcontroller platform and the XC-4478 Arduino breakout board which used an ADXL335, a 3 axis accelerometer. Designing the software posed some specific challenges that had to be overcome in order to provide a design that could reliably take acceleration readings at a sufficient sample rate, while simultaneously storing them correctly. These challenges were overcome and the design progressed through the use of bench tests, which confirmed some aspects of the results. Due to time and resource restraints, it was not possible to test the device in a helicopter. Instead the prototype was secured in a car to provide preliminary results that could be analysed using the MATLAB program developed to create graphs in the time and frequency domains for easier analysis. The resulting device met the major requirements and cost roughly $120, however official calibration would have to be completed to confirm the accuracy of results from the device.
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| Item Type: | USQ Project |
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| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical & Electronic) |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (1 Jul 2013 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Leis, John |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Sep 2022 03:55 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Sep 2022 03:55 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | patient transport; helicopter; vibration; monitoring |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/40898 |
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